Weeds: A Farm Daughter's Lament

In Thomas Jefferson's day, 90 percent of the population worked on family farms. Today, in a world dominated by agribusiness, less than 1 percent of Americans claim farm-related occupations. What was lost along the way is something that Evelyn I. Funda experienced firsthand when, in 2001, her parents sold the last parcel of the farm they had worked since they married in 1957. Against that landscape of loss, Funda explores her family's three-generation farming experience in southern Idaho, where her Czech immigrant family spent their lives turning a patch of sagebrush into crop land.

The story of Funda's family unfolds within the larger context of our country's rich immigrant history, western culture, and farming as a science and an art. Situated at the crossroads of American farming, Weeds: A Farm Daughter's Lament offers a clear view of the nature, the cost, and the transformation of the American West. Part cultural history, part memoir, and part elegy, the book reminds us that in losing our attachment to the land we also lose some of our humanity and something at the very heart of our identity as a nation.

Evelyn I. Funda is an associate professor of American literature at Utah State University. She has written extensively on Willa Cather and her creative nonfiction has appeared in literary magazines, including Prairie Schooner.

Author: Evelyn I. Funda
Publisher: Bison
Published: 09/01/2013
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.88lbs
Size: 8.48h x 5.55w x 0.79d
ISBN: 9780803244962

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 06/15/2013
Shelf Awareness 09/06/2013
New York Times Book Review 02/23/2014 pg. 26

About the Author
Evelyn I. Funda is an associate professor of American literature at Utah State University. She has written extensively on Willa Cather and her creative nonfiction has appeared in literary magazines, including Prairie Schooner.