Windfall: The Prairie Woman Who Lost Her Way and the Great-Granddaughter Who Found Her

by Erika Bolstad Narrated by Marni Penning

Overview

At first, Erika Bolstad knew only one thing about her great-grandmother, Anna: she was a homesteader on the North Dakota prairies in the early 1900s before her husband committed her to an asylum under mysterious circumstances. As Erika's mother was dying, she revealed more: their family still owned the mineral rights to Anna's land?and oil companies were interested in the black gold beneath the prairies. Their family, Erika learned, could get rich thanks to the legacy of a woman nearly lost to history. Anna left no letters or journals, and very few photographs of her had survived. But Erika was drawn to the young woman who never walked free of the asylum that imprisoned her. As a journalist well versed in the effects of fossil fuels on climate change, Erika felt the dissonance of what she knew and the barely-acknowledged whisper that had followed her family across the Great Plains for generations: we could be rich. Desperate to learn more about her great-grandmother and the oil industry that changed the face of the American West forever, Erika set out for North Dakota to unearth what she could of the past. What she discovers is a land of boom-and-bust cycles and families trying their best to eke out a living in an unforgiving landscape, bringing to life the ever-present American question: What does it mean to be rich?

Editorial Reviews

MARCH 2023 - AudioFile

Marni Penning narrates this thoughtful combination of memoir and history. Erika Bolstad grew up hearing stories about her great-grandmother Anna's life as a North Dakota homesteader. The only two solid facts passed down refer to Anna's confinement in a mental institution and the existence of mineral rights to a small parcel of land on the edge of the Bakken oil fields. Penning's wry conversational tone suits Bolstad's dual role as a woman who is probing family secrets and an experienced climate journalist who is recording the complex web of promises and consequences that are part and parcel of fossil fuel production. Penning captures the tension between the public's longing for the windfall that will make life easier and concern about negative impacts on the environment. N.M. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

From the Publisher

"With Windfall, Erika Bolstad offers a keen awareness of a common bind: our deep desire to protect the last natural resources while sustaining our precarious domestic lives. With meticulously researched and clear, ringing prose, she takes us on a journey of consternation, curiosity, and, finally, reconciliation with her family’s past and her own tender future." — Debra Gwartney, author of I Am a Stranger Here Myself

"A vital exploration of the long history of abuse against women, the land, and the weight of inheritance, told in gripping prose. Bolstad's Windfall comes at a crucial time when our country is at a reckoning with its own dark history of conquest and extraction." — Taylor Brorby, author of Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land

Library Journal

11/01/2022

What is more appealing than the thought of an easy way to strike it rich? This thought is the underlying theme of this book by Bolstad, a journalist and documentary filmmaker. With her unexpected mineral rights inheritance in hand and stories about her family, Bolstad journeys to North Dakota to uncover what happened to her great-grandmother, Anna, and how the mineral right came to be. Her book is filled with expertly researched details about the history of oil in the United States, including the politics and racial injustices surrounding the exploration for oil. It's also interwoven with personal stories and the mystery surrounding Anna. While being an informative book, the woven tale feels disjointed and unbalanced with a heavy focus on the oil industry, which takes away from the main draw to the book: Anna. VERDICT This book will appeal to readers who enjoy detailed political history books and those looking to learn a little more about the history of little discussed aspects of the Midwest.—Leah Fitzgerald

MARCH 2023 - AudioFile

Marni Penning narrates this thoughtful combination of memoir and history. Erika Bolstad grew up hearing stories about her great-grandmother Anna's life as a North Dakota homesteader. The only two solid facts passed down refer to Anna's confinement in a mental institution and the existence of mineral rights to a small parcel of land on the edge of the Bakken oil fields. Penning's wry conversational tone suits Bolstad's dual role as a woman who is probing family secrets and an experienced climate journalist who is recording the complex web of promises and consequences that are part and parcel of fossil fuel production. Penning captures the tension between the public's longing for the windfall that will make life easier and concern about negative impacts on the environment. N.M. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2022-09-27
A journalist investigates the life of her great-grandmother in the context of mineral rights, the oil and gas industry, and the American promise that anyone could get rich.

In this mix of history, memoir, and environmental writing, Bolstad, a former reporter for Climatewire, begins with an introduction to Anna Josephine Sletvold, her great-grandmother. The daughter of Norwegian immigrants, Anna homesteaded in North Dakota and, according to family lore, disappeared in 1907. “More than a century later, an oil company sent my mother a $2,400 check,” writes Bolstad. “The oil company was leasing mineral rights along the edges of the booming Bakken oil fields of North Dakota. From the oil company, my mother learned she was an heir to mineral rights below the surface of the land where Anna once had a homestead.” Following the death of her mother three months later, the author began her research, seeking information about her great-grandmother, how her family ended up with the mineral rights, and how this fit into the refrain that “my mother had heard all her life: We could be rich.” In addition to her personal story, Bolstad discusses the Homestead Act and its repercussions over time as well as the “multiple boom and bust cycles” in the North Dakota oil patch. Some of the problems associated with these cycles involve crowded, unsafe Walmart parking lots filled with oil workers, businesses struggling to survive on the promise of a potential windfall, and the many “toxic myths of manifest destiny.” By moving back and forth through her own life, her family members’ lives, and the realities of how oil booms have affected states like North Dakota over time, the author effectively examines the political, economic, and environmental issues involved in the production of energy across the country.

An engrossing look at the effects of the American oil and gas industry through the lens of family history.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940175058025
Publisher:	Dreamscape Media
Publication date:	01/24/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged

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