With the edge of distance, education and careful observation, Sarah Smarsh recounts her family history. HEARTLAND is her first book, and because it was 15 years in the writing, among other complicated possibilities, we may assume that it was not an easy tale to tell. Sorting out the many relatives and their relationships to her, the consistencies and inconsistencies inherent in a farm life, and the luck, both good and bad, necessary to survive, it is clear that many lessons will linger. Smarsh’s considerations will have a powerful impact on both country and city readers.

Be useful. Throughout her life, continuing to the present moment, Smarsh works. Folding towels, selling fireworks along the side of a country road, slopping pigs in her tennis shoes --- all were ordinary tasks for a farm girl. Later, during the peak years of physical energy, she worked at two or three jobs at a time while going to high school and then college. The ethos of hard work lives on.

"It will be books such as this one that may help close the divide in our country between the coasts and the middle, with more understanding and compassion from each side."

Be present. One of the most heartening stories is when Smarsh enters a writing contest at an early age, and she must recite the essay in front of a large assembly as part of the competition. Her entire family is seated (in the back rows, to be sure, to facilitate cigarette breaks). As she names each family member to herself, she reminds us just how difficult it would have been for them to have taken time off from the many levels of employment they held to be there. Still, they all showed up.

Make informed choices. Even as a young girl, Smarsh saw the apparently carefree way many of her friends lived with no plan for change. In her estimation, this was assurance that she would be underpaid, undervalued and, most certainly, a young mother. She worked, and she chose to observe, having a way of seeing a world she was crafting for herself. She had watched her mother and grandmother show her “the energy of a crisp apple”; she knew there was power in being a woman of that heritage. Although the chances are good that she did not realize the education she was receiving at the time it was given, she remembered. It was a blessing of her class.

Be realistic. For the complete emphasis on hard work, Smarsh maintains that getting up before dawn and working until past dark was not paying off. Their lack of money was not due to lack of effort. The problem seemed far away, in the big cities, and the family could only shake their heads, “hate the government and get the combine into the shed before it started to hail.” It would take the awakening of city sensibilities in her college classes to confirm that she was not going to be rich.

As a continuing thread to connect the stories she tells, Smarsh introduces an imaginary daughter she is carrying in her womb. She calls the baby August, named for her birth month, and later she discovers the middle name of her much-loved paternal grandfather at his funeral. Smarsh’s mother was a teenage mother, as was her grandmother, and Smarsh herself understands the life-changing, perhaps life-stunting situation of being a teen mom. She asked permission from her family to open the vault of stories, and includes ones that are happy, pathetic, fearful and embarrassing. At the conclusion of them, sometimes she will stop and point out to her imagined daughter that this is what she has been saved from. The technique is odd, at least to me, but it does not wear thin and in fact enhances her heartfelt admiration even while telling non-admirable stories.

Reading HEARTLAND should open up many conversations about choices, youthful but still authentic, and we can celebrate the wisdom of Smarsh’s account of her Kansas farm childhood. It will be books such as this one that may help close the divide in our country between the coasts and the middle, with more understanding and compassion from each side.