Showing Prairie Silence: A Memoir by Melanie Hoffert

A rural expatriate's struggle to reconcile family, home, love, and faith with the silence of the prairie land and its people.

Melanie Hoffert longs for her rural North Dakota home with its grain trucks and empty main streets. But like many, she followed the out-migration pattern to a more urban life. When she returns home during harvest to confront the silences that have kept her at arm's length from her childhood community, she finds it's not easy. When asked if she's found a "fella," rather than explain that she dates women, she stops breathing and changes the subject.

In this evocative memoir, Hoffert offers a deeply personal and poignant meditation on land and community, taking listeners on a journey of self-acceptance and reconciliation.