Book Review
A Sandhills Ballad, by Ladette Randolph. (Bison Books) After her life as she knows it ends in heartbreak, Mary Rasmussen, a strong-willed and independent young ranch woman living in the Sandhills of western Nebraska, suddenly feels that everything she has believed in—God, her instincts, the land itself—has failed her. She abandons her cultural and emotional ties, succumbing to circumstances she thinks she is powerless to control. In a rash decision, she marries a conservative, patriarchal preacher who doesn’t understand her, the ranching community, or anything beyond his own beliefs. Mary’s inner turmoil builds as she comes to appreciate the gravity of her situation and the need to take action.“Stark and engrossing, this debut novel . . . fixes an empathetic but relentless gaze on a woman determined to expunge the regrets from her life. . . . An immersing achievement, this novel should please any fan of good fiction.” — Publishers Weekly
Ladette Randolph is the director of Ploughshares magazine and is Distinguished Publisher-in-Residence in the Writing, Literature, and Publishing program at Emerson College. She is the author of the short-story collection This Is Not the Tropics and the editor of The Big Empty: Contemporary Nebraska Nonfiction Writers and A Different Plain: Contemporary Nebraska Fiction Writers, both available in Bison Books editions. She is the recipient of the Pushcart Prize, a Rona Jaffe Foundation grant, four Nebraska Book Awards, including one for A Sandhills Ballad, and the Virginia Faulkner Award; her work has been reprinted in Best New American Voices 2000.