Prairie City, Iowa: Three Seasons at Home

by Douglas Bauer

Book Overview

Weary from the journalistic treadmill of "going from one assignment to the next, like an itinerant fieldworker moving to his harvests" and healing from a divorce, Douglas Bauer decided it was time to return to his hometown. Back in Prairie City, he helped on his father's farm, scooped grains at the Co-op, and tended bar at the Cardinal. The resultant memoir is a classic picture of an adult experiencing one's childhood roots as a grown-up and testing...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1587296810
• ISBN13: 9781587296819
• Release Date: November 2008
• Publisher: University of Iowa Press
• Length: 344 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Warmth without sentimentality

This is a most accurate account of daily living in a small Iowa town. The subtlety of the author's descriptions can only be fully appreciated by one who has grown up in that environment. Bauer makes no apologies for the foibles of the townspeople, but neither does he seem to satirize them. His insight into the people of Prairie City adds a natural warmth without lathering up with any undue sentimentality. I would recommend this to anyone who has an interest in small towns in the Midwest - and what makes them tick.

interesting portraits of the kind ofmen who seldom say much

Enjoyed his slice-of-life descriptions of people he spent time with. At first I was puzzle at the choices of characters, all men (incuding his father)and mainly those who did manual labor. Where was the rest of the town? Then I realized that he examining the people that he (and me) had least understood growing up.