Windfall: The Prairie Woman Who Lost Her Way and the Great-Granddaughter Who Found Her

In this powerful debut, journalist Bolstad investigates a century-old family mystery involving the disappearance of her great-grandmother. All Bolstad knew about Anna Josephine Sletvold, a Norwegian woman who settled in the prairies of North Dakota, was that she disappeared from her homestead in 1907. In 2009, after Bolstad’s mother received a surprise check from an oil company that leased land near where Anna once lived, Bolstad started researching Anna’s life. What she learned is that Anna filed a homestead claim in the fall of 1905. Less than two years later, a judge declared Anna insane after a doctor diagnosed her with what is now known as postpartum depression, and she was committed to an asylum, where she remained until her death in 1921. Along the way, Bolstad chronicles North Dakota’s history of “boom and bust cycles,” details how the Homestead Act of 1862 allowed the federal government to displace Indigenous peoples so that millions of settlers could claim a “new start,” and indicts the oil industry for its reliance on such disputed practices as fracking and flaring. Bolstad approaches Anna’s story with empathy, and she lucidly explains the impact of oil and gas extraction on the communities that depend on it economically. In unraveling a family mystery, Bolstad tells a much larger, richer story. (Jan.)