Dakota: A Spiritual Geography

by Kathleen Norris $12.00, Houghton Mifflin, 224 pages Book Review by Steve Silver

A sign of incipient derangement perhaps, but I have always been fascinated by the cover choices made by publishers when a book previously published in hardback is brought out in paper. Almost invariably the dust jacket artwork is replaced by some other design. Whether this is to convince the owners of the earlier version to rush out and by the new work with its new appearance or is the result of some unholy bargain between publishers and some secret book cover design guild remains unknown to me. However, on occasion the change is illuminating and I believe that Dakota is one of those instances.

While I offer price information for the paperback edition of Ms. Norris' volume I read the hardback version. The dust jacket on this slim volume offers up an anonymous vista with a wide sky and huge clouds floating above. The words that come to mind are "empty" and "vast." The paper edition offers up a picture of a country church from not too far off. One thinks "intimate" and "sanctuary." Both are themes that appear in the book but it is clear that we run from the former to the latter. Ms. Norris knew that and her publisher did too.

Dakota is a strange little book, part memoir, part meditation, part travelogue. We learn about life in tiny Lemmon, South Dakota, the ways of the locals, the weather on the Plains. We encounter people who are noble and insular, curious and suspicious. We see a place that has been deemed anachronistic by today's standards yet offers much of what so many of us claim to seek in our communities. Ms. Norris makes clear that the charm of authentic small town life comes at a price — limited job opportunities, a wariness of outsiders, isolation from the world at large. Yet she also has succumbed to the appeal of this place with which she has a family connection. The pace of life is saner, there is less mental and cultural clutter. One can think big thoughts.

Kathleen Norris' big thoughts, at least the ones she shares with us, concern coming to terms with her past, familial and spiritual. It is back in Dakota that she comes to understand herself and her ancestors. It is in Dakota, after a twenty year absence, that she can set foot again in a church and reengage the religion of her youth albeit from a different perspective and in a different milieu.

Out there on the plains Norris' Christian life is resurrected through her involvement with a small local church at which she has been the lay preacher and through her connection to a Benedectine monastery where she is an oblate. As one reads the book, the monastery becomes a greater and more forceful presence. We encounter monks early on but is at the books end that we realize just what a presence they have been throughout.

In the 1990s, monks are chic, along with body piercing and Buddhism. The HMV record store on Winter Street still has life-size cutouts of those chanting monks from Spain whose albums were such a hit with the public. Of course, it is easy to like their oh-so-soothing music. But how many of us would be ready to chuck it all, sell our possessions, renounce the pleasures of this world and go off to live in a monastery? Personally, I know that I have enough trouble leaving my credit card in my wallet whenever I go into a bookstore, which is why I now how have enough books to tide me over well into the next century.

Yet, one need not be a monk to appreciate what these men are doing. One can always draw inspiration from such people, steel oneself for the task ahead. Norris knows that the Christian vocation isn't an easy enterprise. Implicit in her writing is an understanding that resurrection doesn't come without crucifixion, that for all his troubles, Jesus was nailed up to a cross. But also present is a realization that the risk is worth the reward.

This is, as noted, a strange book. One rarely encounters discussion of the farm crisis of the 1980s, diary entries about weather and conversations with Benedictines between the same covers. But it is an interesting book, easy to read in one or two sittings or piecemeal over a period of time (44 chapters in a little over 224 pages; you do the math), and the writing is competent and at times lyrical.

I have no interest in visiting South Dakota or in becoming a monk. But thanks to Ms. Norris slim little volume, I know more about a place that to me had been nothing more to me than home to missile silos. And while we all walk our own paths with the Lord its nice to share our adventures with others. Kathleen Norris is to be commended for sharing part of her trip with us. +