Whispered Secrets Whispered Prayers

a must read for descendants of the settlers of our plains and prairies, and in particular of the little known ethnic group of germans from russia. urs wagnor, is a sometimes crude and prideful tenant farmer with a fierce love for land that should be his. instead, in the spring of 1947, in the wake of farm failures and foreclosures, his fields belong to "humpy" chris, a calculating landlord deformed in body and soul, who begrudges men like urs, scratching lives from the poor north dakota soil. urs doesn't own his land any more than he owns the heart of his wife, margaret, who loves the god that sustains her, just as it sustained her ancestors who settled and struggled on the russian steppes a century before. beholden and resentful of urs, margaret is pregnant againand urs wants a son.
when urs, chris and margaret are unwittingly ensnared in a web of calamity and ruin, only six-year-old Annie, possesses the innocent powers of insight, imagination and compassion that might save them from themselves.
whispered secrets whispered prayers is a marrow-deep, character-driven story in the tradition of kent haruf's plainsong. the simple words and sentiments of common people belie the enormity and danger of human passions and their twisted and hidden source. set on the desolate north american wind-flattened prairie, under the vast dome of pitiless sky, the novel also recalls the terse, tense psychological and surreal drama of o.e. rolvaag's classic giants in the earth.

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