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Portable Prairie : Confessions of an Unsettled Midwesterner [Hardcover]

M. J. Andersen (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Before even mentioning her Midwestern roots in the first chapter of this memoir, Andersen compares the events in Anna Karenina to a train-related suicide in her current Massachusetts hometown, musing on Tolstoy's love/hate relationship with his family estate, and his religious conversion, flight from home and subsequent death at a train station. These themes—home, trains, exile, Christianity—run throughout Andersen's book, and the author, a journalist from a family of newspaper people, skillfully unites them with a voice both vulnerably personal and insightfully far-ranging. In vivid recollections of childhood (which could stand on their own), she recalls the security and smugness of living in a tiny farm town "too far away" for anything to happen; her parents' struggles running a smalltown newspaper; the wonder of rising in the cold of night to catch the train to Minneapolis for Christmas shopping; the Midwestern determination of a local horticulturist to travel the world to find plants that could survive South Dakota's extreme climate; and Andersen's odyssey through crowded, cropless Northeastern regions. Although occasionally indulging in heartland-centric generalizations ("the Midwest has long been the imaginary home of all Americans"), this is an enlightening, moving rhapsody on the spirit of place and the meaning of home.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

From her vantage point as a middle-aged, New England-based journalist, Andersen recalls her midwestern roots in this small gem of a memoir. Growing up in a seemingly insignificant South Dakota town, she recollects the almost smug security of her prairie childhood. A child of the plains, she joyously revels in the idyllic, all-American life she lived with her parents--the owners and operators of a local newspaper--and her slightly older brother. Chock-full of Americana, plenty of local color, and charming sketches of a number of vividly remembered characters, her formative years are juxtaposed with her current experiences as a new home owner attempting to recapture the absolute certainty of a bygone time and place. Brimming with humor and sentiment, this affectionate look backward reaffirms the possibility of taking home with you wherever you may venture. Margaret Flanagan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books (December 9, 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0312326890
  • ISBN-13: 978-0312326890
  • Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.9 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,566,482 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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More About the Author

M. J. Andersen
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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WE LIVE near the train tracks. Read the first page
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South Dakota, Sixth Street, Grandpa Hansen, Main Street, Roy Rogers, Yasnaya Polyana, Rhode Island, Duke Ellington, Herald Advance, New York, Grandpa Andersen, North Dakota, Uncle Elton, Anna Karenina, Bert Tollefson, Tel Aviv, Aunt Peggy, Grandma Tait, Niels Ebbesen Hansen, Ray Nelson, Royal Copenhagen, United States, World War, Betty Friedan, East Coast
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Customer Reviews

7 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.4 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Finding Home, July 25, 2005
By J. Mackin (cambridge, ma) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Portable Prairie : Confessions of an Unsettled Midwesterner (Hardcover)
M.J. Andersen's search for home will resonate with just about anyone, whether you've moved a 100 times or lived in the same town your entire life. She is looking not just for a physical space to call her own, but an emotional one as well.
Anderson's story is both amusing and touching, as she takes the reader through her childhood in South Dakota, through her years on the east coast - first at Princeton and eventually in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. She understands the human need to find what is recognizable in any place - especially in a place where one's ancestors originated. She writes in an easy, thoughtful style that evokes all the landscapes she is intimately familiar with. The book is deep without being weighty.
In addition, as a transplant myself, and someone one who found herself living in Cambridge, I found Andersen's take on Boston and Cambridge to be right on the mark. She finds the humor in a place that often takes itself too seriously.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Kierkegaard and Shopping, February 6, 2005
This review is from: Portable Prairie : Confessions of an Unsettled Midwesterner (Hardcover)
In Portable Prairie, M.J. Andersen's biographical meditation on home, we are challenged to answer for ourselves: is home a location, a place, or do we carry it around with us as the snail carries his shell? In weaving the threads of her life and intellectual growth, she creates a rich tapestry in which we, as readers, can see elements of our own experience. Andersen travels the country and the world in her search, mixing Tolstoy and Disneyland, Kierkegaard and shopping. Oh, and it's funny - Andersen will draw you along as though building an argument in debate and then leave you laughing out loud.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars An accurate and enjoyable book, March 29, 2006
By L. Pole (Plymouth, MN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Portable Prairie: Confessions of an Unsettled Midwesterner (Paperback)
I grew up in South Dakota, and really enjoyed and appreciated how this book captures the feelings of that experience: the beauty of the endless prairie meeting the boundless sky far off on the horizon, the wonder and awe of Minneapolis, and the feeling that you never quite fit in anywhere else in the world but the prairie.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful memoir
I grew up in New England, but now I've been to the prairie. MJ Andersen's book was the first one I've read about prairie life since Laura Ingells Wilder all those years ago. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Robin N. Uncapher

5.0 out of 5 stars The girl who would be Tolstoy
I was afraid when I began this book that it was going to attempt to emulate the Russian master. In saying this, I'm probably revealing my own proletarian ignorance. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Timothy J. Bazzett

1.0 out of 5 stars A Feel-Good novella from and for my generation
This 3 Ivy-League certificated Dickens shop-girl made my life seem Bill Gates-esque in comparison to what she wrote about her life experiences. Read more
Published on February 24, 2006 by Surf Accountant

5.0 out of 5 stars Tapestry
Portable Prairie is a brilliant memoir. M. J. Andersen introduces one little story after another and then refers to each again and again, weaving it all together in a wonderful... Read more
Published on March 9, 2005 by Lonny Parsons

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