{"product_id":"water-and-what-we-know-karen-babine-9780816696789","title":"Water and What We Know: Following the Roots of a Northern Life","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e2016 Minnesota Book Award Winner for Memoir \u0026amp; Creative Nonfiction\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Consider your place, the place where you feel the most at home: a tree-lined lake, a bean field planted on stolen land, a rig drilling the golden prairie, city streets alive with energy. Written in the language of the northern landscape of experience, Karen Babine explores the meaning of being in your place on a particular day.\u003cp\u003eIn essays that travel from the wildness of Lake Superior to the order of an apple orchard, Babine traces an ethic of place, a way to understand the essence of inhabiting a place deeply rooted in personal stories. She takes us from moments of reflection, through the pages of her Minnesota family's history, to the drama of the land and the shaping of the earth. From the Mississippi's Headwaters in Itasca State Park--its name from \u003ci\u003everitas caput, \u003c\/i\u003e or \"true head\"--she explores the desire that drives the idea of the North. The bite of a Honeycrisp apple grown in Ohio returns her to her origin in Minnesota and to pie-making lessons in her Gram's kitchen. In the Deadwood, South Dakota, of her great-great-grandfather, briefly police chief; in the translation of her ancestors from Swedish to Minnesotan; on the outer edge of the New Madrid Fault in Nebraska; through the flatlands along I-90; at the foot of Mount St. Helens: Babine pursues what the Irish call \u003ci\u003edinnseanchas\u003c\/i\u003e, place-lore. How, she asks, does land determine what kind of people grow in that soil? And through it all runs water, carrying a birch bark canoe with a bullet hole and a bloodstain, roaring over the \u003ci\u003eEdmund Fitzgerald, \u003c\/i\u003e flooding the Red River Valley, carving the glaciated land along with historical memory.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs she searches out the stories that water has written upon human consciousness, Babine reveals again and again what their poignancy tells us about our place and what it means to be here.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Karen Babine\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0816696780\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780816696789\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Minnesota Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 02\/15\/2015\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 240\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.52lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 7.90h x 5.00w x 0.70d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAward:\u003c\/b\u003e Minnesota Book Award - Finalist\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e 02\/15\/2015 pg. 28","brand":"Karen Babine","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":44652114673919,"sku":"9780816696789","price":17.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_46f436a8-906a-4070-b393-ab19b6ace154.jpg?v=1704214632","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/water-and-what-we-know-karen-babine-9780816696789","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}