Book description
Short-listed for the Orange Award for New Writers Long-listed for the
Orange Prize Winner of the Texas Institute of Letters Debut Novel Prize
It is 1917 in the South Dakota Badlands, and summer has been hard.
Fourteen years have passed since Rachel and Isaac DuPree left Chicago to
stake a claim in this unforgiving land. Isaac, a former Buffalo Soldier,
is fiercely proud: black families are rare in the West, and black
ranchers even rarer. But it hasn't rained in months, the cattle bellow
with thirst, and supplies are dwindling. Pregnant, and struggling to
feed her family, Rachel is isolated by more than just geography. She is
determined to give her surviving children the life they deserve, but she
knows that her husband will never leave his ranch: land means a measure
of equality with the white man, and Isaac DuPree is not about to give it
up just because times are hard. Somehow Rachel must find the strength to
do what is right - for her children, for her husband, and for herself.
Moving and majestic, The Personal History of Rachel DuPree is an
unforgettable novel about love and loyalty, homeland and belonging.
Above all, it is the story of one woman's courage in the face of the
most punishing adversity.
Ann Weisgarber was born and raised in Kettering, Ohio. After
graduating from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, she was a
social worker in a psychiatric hospital before moving to Houston,
Texas, with her husband. She earned a Master of Arts in Sociology at
the University of Houston and taught high school and later, sociology
at a junior college. She has lived in Boston, Massachusetts, and Des
Moines, Iowa, but now splits her time between Sugar Land, Texas, and
Galveston, Texas.
