The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere

by Debra Marquart

Book Overview

Debra Marquart grew up on a farm in rural North Dakota--on land her family had worked for generations. From the earliest age she knew she wanted out; surely life had more to offer than this unyielding daily grind, she thought. But she was never able to abandon it completely.

A] rich memoir, set in North Dakota, about growing up on and escaping from a family farm for a future that held once unheard-of opportunities as a rock musician, poet,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1582433453
• ISBN13: 9781582433455
• Release Date: June 2006
• Publisher: Counterpoint LLC
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 2.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Searing and funny memoir of coming of age in North Dakota.

Funny and bittersweet, this memoir captures the difficult relations between children and parents and will resonate with many American young women who took a path their parents didn't anticipate and struggle for recognition both at home and in the equally tough wider world of adulthood. Debra Marquart's a fine, fine writer--one to watch.

This book touched my heart!

Wow! Debra Marquart very accurately portrayed the essence of growing up "wild" in North Dakota in the 70's. She touched my heart and validated my experiences and memories of that time, too. I want more, more, more!

Farm Girl Agrees: This Book is AMAZING!

As someone who grew up in the middle of nowhere I can attest to the fact that Debra Marquart's writing is spot on. She describes a very specific subculture of the U.S. (i.e., the upper Midwest) with humor, grace and uncanny truth. She gives voice to a kind of life that is rarely spoken of by those who have endured it. Her insights made me alternately crumple on the floor in tears and laugh out loud shouting "Yes!" Simply put, she gets it right. To top that, she's done her research, too; she mixes lots of interesting background information with excellent storytelling. I am giving this to all my exiled Midwestern friends for Christmas!

Dazzling Memoir

This is the most engaging book I've read in several years. Written with all the power that could be expected of an Iowa Writers Program Professor, it tells it's own story while exposing the desperate truths of all who've violently wrenched themselves out of home ground to find a life that fit. Blunt, funny, ironic and wry, its bravely openhearted look at a younger self made me look clearly at my own 20-year-old self, that I've disowned for over 35 years, and invite her back in.

North by northwest . . .

This terrific collection of personal essays is part memoir, part social history, and part appreciation for the lunar topography of the author's home state, North Dakota, where reminders of its geological past are everywhere in the flat expanse of inland seafloor, the rolling terrain of glacial morrain, and the rocks that surface each year in the fields and need to be cleared by hand. Marquart, descendant of German-speaking immigrants from Russia, tells of the generations of her family, who have farmed the same homestead since the late 19th century. Born the last of five siblings, she grows up driving tractors and pickups and doing chores from an early age, while yearning, always yearning, for escape - life being ever elsewhere. With a career as a singer for a heavy metal band behind her and currently teaching creative writing at Iowa State, she looks back over the years, aware that her identity is still linked to her roots "in the middle of nowhere" and to a family that cannot comprehend any of the life she has lived since she left home. Most poignant are her memories of her father, whose funeral begins the book, while an episode on an out-of-state trip with both elderly parents ("To Kill a Deer") is a groaningly hilarious tribute to the impossibility of communicating across generations. Other subjects covered are the special trials of growing up female in a farming community, including the imagined trauma of being among its first settlers from the Old Country, as well as the tenuous self-esteem of North Dakotans whose most well-known celebrity is Lawrence Welk. Marquart is a fine, entertaining, and moving writer, an eloquent voice for the diminishing number of those who grew up on small family farms on the Great Plains. Also recommended: Judy Blunt, "Breaking Clean"; Kathleen Norris, "Dakota"; Bobbie Ann Mason, "Clear Springs"; and Kent Meyers, "Light in the Crossing."