Ann Weisgarber

What sparked The Personal History of Rachel DuPree?
I was on vacation a few years ago in Badlands National Park in South Dakota. Near one of the park’s entrances was a sign advertising a 1909 sod dugout. It didn’t look like much from the road since the dugout was blocked from view by a wood fence. I was curious, though, and had the time. I pulled into the empty parking lot. 

My tour guide, whose grandparents had been homesteaders, showed me around. The back end of the dugout was built into the side of a small hill, giving it a cave-like feeling. Its roof sagged and prairie grass grew between the roof’s tin plates. Inside, it had a dank, musty smell. The walls were made of sod, and the floor was dirt, hard packed. There was a potbelly stove in a small sitting room, and a low-slung bed took up most of the space in the bedroom.   

In the kitchen the dirt around the cookstove was worn down like a path. A woman, I guessed, once stood there for the better part of each day, day after day, preparing food. I tried to imagine that.  There must have been times when she felt trapped by the constant demand to feed her family. Yet, on the oven door, an embossed ring of ivy made the cookstove an object of beauty. It may have been her albatross, but the cookstove was hers and hers alone. It must have made her proud.

A few days later I happened to stop at a roadside museum in South Dakota and saw a photo of an African-American woman sitting by herself in front of a dugout. That surprised me; I had never heard of black settlers in the American West. But there she was, her mouth set and her eyes steady. She had a story, and I wanted to hear it.   

I gave her a name and a dugout with a cookstove. The Personal History of Rachel DuPree is the story of what might have happened.  

Please set the scene of the novel for us.
It is 1917 in the South Dakota Badlands and the summer has been hard. Fourteen years have passed since Rachel and Isaac DuPree left Chicago to stake a claim in this harsh land of prairie grass, buttes, and canyons. Isaac, a former Buffalo Soldier, is proud:  black families are rare in the West, and black ranchers are even rarer. Rachel is just as proud. The daughter of former slaves, she takes pride in her wood house.   

But it hasn’t rained in months, the cattle bellow with thirst, and supplies are low. So too is the water in the well. Desperate, Isaac ties a rope around their six-year-old daughter and with the help of Rachel and two other children, he lowers the child into the well to scoop water into a bucket, one ladle at a time.

This begins a chain of events that forces Rachel to question her choices and to eventually find the strength to do what is right for her children, for herself, and for Isaac. 

Do you have a particular attachment to any of the characters or places in the novel.  If so, which one(s) and why?  
I’ve always loved the South Dakota Badlands partly because of its stark beauty and partly because of its name. There is something eerie about a place called badlands. It’s a warning, and yet, in the Badlands, when the sun sets the buttes shimmer pink and white. When the wind blows the prairie grass whispers, and at night the Milky Way is a mystical path of light. 

I’m also attached to Isaac DuPree, Rachel’s husband. He is a man of his time. Owning land gives him dignity and worth. Land gives his children a future. He pits his strength against the land, and he pits his will against anyone who tries to separate him from his land.  I don’t agree with everything Isaac does, but I admire his spirit. His willingness to sacrifice is the norm in the American West.     

What are you reading at the moment?
I just finished Doug Worgul’s Thin Blue Smoke which I enjoyed very much. The characters’ voices are strong and distinctive, and the humor comes in all the right places. Lissa Evans’ Their Finest Hour and a Half and Scottsboro by Ellen Feldman are both on my list. It’s a coin toss which one I’ll read first.  

What are you working on now?
My next novel takes place in Galveston, Texas, and is based on the 1900 hurricane that killed 6,000 people on the island. The narrator is a young woman whose husband, a cattle rancher, disappears during the storm. The story revolves around her search for her husband and her determination to keep the ranch.