The pace and tone of the narrative in "Westhope: Life as a Former Farm Boy" matches the overall tempo and character of farm life, with its acts of sowing and reaping, of birth and rebirth and in hard times, of foreclosure and moving on.
For those who have lived close to the land, they will recognize the truths that Westhope native Dean Hulse tells. For those without this intimate knowledge, his story as the son of multi-generational farmers who revered the hardscrabble life of family farming, is instructive, as is Hulse's appraisal of economic forces that have led to the destruction of small-town Main Street and to the depopulation of the Great Plains.
To put it simply, Hulse knows where family values and food come from. He understands the labor-intensive process of crop production. He understands the purity of character that such envrions can create in its community members, along with the impurity of character that confounds the mix. He has first-hand knowledge of the independence of mind that characterizes Dakota-made individuals, and he tells their stories with the dignity and grace they deserve.
Memorable images from Hulse's childhood forays on Westhope's Main Street include a Saturday night treat a bottle of "chocolate-flavored Coke with some toasted cashews tossed in." He describes playing hide-and-seek using the lilac bush by the Masonic Temple as an undercover spot, which was soon to become "another hideaway where juveniles could smoke (and occasionally share with me) their Salems and Winstons and Old Golds."
His depictions of dying Main Street are tinged with sadness. Yet he is hopeful that a revitalization of rural life is possible.
Written in a series of memoir-style essays, the reader is introduced to a North Dakota tuberculosis sanitarium, where several Hulse family members were treated. San Haven was "a fortress" that "oozed eeriness an institutional complex with buildings of brick, fieldstone, or stucco, a water tower, and evergreens, visible for perhaps 10 miles."
In the section "Rocks Taking Root," Hulse, who now lives in Fargo, describes his search for "connectedness" to his homesteading great-great grandfather. A walk down a prairie trail near the North Dakota/Canadian border yields this:
"Suddenly, I saw two large, brown eyes, and equally oversized ears," he wrote. "A fawn had risen from its grassy-weedy resting place and was watching me. Later, I compared my experience to that of Adam's me, attempting to name what I saw. The face of innocence? Of peacefulness? Or was it the face of conscience asking me why I'd been away so long?"
Like Robert Frost, Hulse uses nature as metaphor, connecting the natural world to questions of ultimate human concern.
Additional topics discussed in the discerning narratives include populism, commodity-giant Cargill's market influence, Ojibwe and Irish mythology, transgenic crop varieties, and Avon products among them. Leaving the complexity of topics aside, "Westhope" is essentially a story about a son whose memories of his mother, father, ancestors and friends are forged during a life of wandering away and returning, of rebellion and reconciliation, of remembering and forgetting, and most of all, of loving and forgiving.
Pamela Sund reviews literature for The High Plains Reader in Fargo.
