Author
From Part I, A Rare Find
“My grandfather Carlson had built the house high on a knoll. With stately trees and a huge red barn beside it, it had been a landmark, visible for miles around. Now it was as if all evidence of our existence had been erased by the wandlike arm of the center-pivot irrigation sprinkler I’d parked beside.”
As The Ogallala Road begins, I have returned to Kansas to research the watershed where I was born and raised. I begin in what we called “the canyon pasture.” A canyon in that part of the country is not quite as dramatic as a canyon in say Utah. On a trip to Kansas this summer, I took this picture of a place that reminded me of what it looked like.
From the book,
From Part 1, “A Rare Find”
“As we approached the Kansas border, alll I could tune in on the radio was a moralizing talk-show hostess. ‘What did you think would happen when you married an alcoholic? Alcoholism is a disease, Emily, a disease. Do you remember your vows? In sickness and in—.’ I cut her power off midsentence.
‘Amen,’ Jake said. Noise from the Subaru’s leaking windows filled the silence.”
***
Fortunately Jake was sixteen when we heard that radio broadcast,
I was asked to read this book for the purpose of supplying a jacket endorsement. While that task can sometimes be a chore, in this case it proved to be an honor and a joy. Here is my “blurb”:
“Altitude Adjustment gives honest, inspiring testimony to the inexorable power of the human will when seized by a grand dream. We cannot help but root for Mary Beth Baptiste as she risks all to live more freely and meaningfully.
