Not for everyone, but I loved it.

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	• Dakota: A Spiritual Geography Kathleen Norris Mariner Books, 2001 - 256 pages average customer review:based on 46 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Not for everyone, but I loved it.

Having moved from a large city to a small town in West Texas, I could totally identify with this book. I learned a lot about the dynamics of a small town, both good and bad. Spiritually, I came to the realization that I found my own desert. The insights that accompany that realization along with the prose of the book are definitely worth the time.

That having been said, this book is not for everyone. It is highly spiritual and insightful, but in an understated way.

More spirituality than Dakotas

I had been meaning to read this book for years. After finally doing so, and then skimming through the 40+ previous Amazon reviews, it is clear that the book will appeal most to those of a highly spiritual bent (but probably not devout followers of an organized religious denomination or practice). I am not highly spiritual, so the book does not speak as intensely to me as no doubt it does to many. Nonetheless, I admire the author's sincerity and her individuality.

As for the "Dakota" angle, that too is present, although not to the degree perhaps suggested by the title. Don't expect some sort of travelogue or overview of the Dakotas. In point of fact, much of the content is rather prosaic, which of course is not really a criticism of what is essentially an inward, spiritual book. Actually, the "geographical" locus of the book has more to do, I think, with the High Plains and with small towns than it does with the Dakotas.

The book consists of thirty or so short stand-alone chapters, interspersed with what the author terms "weather reports". Thus, it is somewhat of a hodgepodge; it certainly is not an example or product of linear thought (which also denotes it as spiritual in nature). I ended up marking a few sentences or paragraphs for future reference. In that sense, I found the book to be somewhat like a magpie's collection -- a few sparkling gem-like pieces of glass amidst a lot of string, weeds, and twigs.

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3.8 stars: More good than bad

The book likens the experience of living in the western Dakotas to that of monasticism. Some poetry in prose as she enthuses over the landscape, and her occasional visits to a nearby Benedictine monastery. (Norris is a Presbyterian.) The book is marred by some digressions on economics that may have seemed necessary to the author, but which did not magnetize this reader; also, there are some remarks about her fellow townspeople (their provincialism, their being "set in their ways") that seem to flirt with "Snobama"-type elitism. There is the incredible claim on p. 210 that the Benedictine order predates "the Catholic hierarchy" -- to employ the popular code, whiskey tango foxtrot? But Norris's genuine affection for the monks, for the landscape, and (yes) for most of her neighbors, does come through and make us almost forget the flaws.

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A beautiful book.

I read this book every couple of years and find it a fresh, new read everytime. I recently ordered an extra copy for some friends. To my parents, this was one of those books you love and give copies of to all you friends, siblings, and children. I think I will be doing the same thing.

A Truly Spiritual Geography

The key to this book is right there in the title. The Dakota of Kathleen Norris' experience, depiction, and understanding is a decidedly spiritual state of being. Just as "deep calls unto deep," so the austere, high plains landscape both evokes and instructs Norris' interior world. Having traveled with Norris through her "Cloister Walk," and having learned her lexicon in "Amazing Grace," I was prepared to look around Dakota with her penetrating vision, to listen to the wind with her attentive hearing, to think deeply about what we were seeing together, and to let my heart grow still as she taught me. Now, though I've never yet been to the high plains, I have truly been to Kathleen Norris' unique and personal Dakota -- and is that not the best accolade for a travelogue, that the reader honestly feels that he's made the trip? I gave this book to a deep-souled friend who needed the time of quiet contemplation it provides, and I recommend it to you as well.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

"A book of stories, a book of prayer, a book to be read meditatively and well," DAKOTA offers a timeless tribute to a place in the American landscape that is at once desolate and sublime, harsh and forgiving, steeped in history and myth. From the award-winning author of AMAZING GRACE, DAKOTA is Kathleen Norris at her most thoughtful, her most discerning, her best. She gives us, once again, a rare "gift of hope and balance, a place to begin" (Chicago Tribune) and assurance that wherever we go, we chart our own spiritual geography.

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