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The Ogallala Road: A Memoir Of Love And Reckoning (2014)

by Julene Bair(Favorite Author)

3.69 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0670786047 (ISBN13: 9780670786046)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Viking Adult

review 1: This book resonates with me as I am familiar with the mantra, " Hang onto the land" from my parents and from growing up out in New Mexico on a large dry land farm. I understand the love that land, memory and waving stems of Buffalo grass can evoke along with the sadness, a kind of grieving over the passing away of the lifestyle that I grew up in . The continued funeral March of the small farm, ranch embodies a flow of tears, a regret and a deep longing for a past assurance that all will be well. The Ogallala Aquifer is the main vein of water in an enormous area of land stretching from the Dakotas to New Mexico and North Texas and as long as I can remember a deep source of contention between those who wish to conserve and those hell-bent to pump out this precious liquid gol... mored as fast as they can. Julene's writing addresses this issue along with her quest for herself and love and reconciliation with land and family loss.
review 2: The author poses, and to her credit tries to answer, critical questions about the ever diminishing Ogallala Aquifer. For example, she asks "Why are a few thousand plains farmers allowed to pump 19 million acre feet out of the aquifer each year? That is more than half again as much as the annual flow of the Colorado River which brings water to thirty million people." If only our national and state leaders were answering, or even asking, such questions. Bair's assessment of ethanol and the perverse role it plays in this issue is worth reading all by itself. So long as she sticks to matters concerning the Ogallala, her family and what it is like to live on a farm, the book is both informative and entertaining. The sections concerning her romantic life, however, would best have been deleted. They are not particularly well told nor are they intrinsically interesting. But for that I would have given this book 4 stars rather than 3. less

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