Meadowlark Cover

June 22, 2013 by Dawn Wink 73 Comments

It’s HERE! It’s here. It’s here. It’s here!

I just received the cover for Meadowlark from the publisher. And I LOVE it! I approached the cover with much trepeditation. I had some ideas. The publisher had some ideas. All I really knew was, “I’ll know it when I see it.” I worried that my expectations were too high, that whatever the image, it wouldn’t quite be it. I needn’t have spent energy on that. I am beyond thrilled. This image was taken on the ranch of the land Grace that walked and lived. I could go on and on about what I love about this cover—and all center on how this image conveys Grace’s story.

I am deeply grateful for what authors have written about Meadowlark:  

“Dawn Wink writes in the tradition of O.E. Rolvaag, Willa Cather, Mari Sandoz, and Mary Clearman Blew, with a clear-eyed understanding of the connections between isolation and oppression, especially for women, on the Great Plains. Wink is not afraid to look at difficult and uncomfortable issues such as domestic violence, Indian boarding schools, or the law’s corruption. She also surprises us by writing about intimate and hidden issues like early 20^th-century contraception. She has a fine sense for characters and a deep understanding of land. The scene where Grace Robertson, her protagonist, makes a punching bag out of a feed sack in order to work out her anger, and then returns to work and love, is worth the price of the novel by itself. This is a gritty novel but also a hopeful one, exploring the ugliness of power and the ways despair can drive good people to do awful things but also exploring compassion’s ability to bind, rejuvenate, and redeem.”     — Kent Meyers, The Work of Wolves (South Dakota One Book 2005), Twisted Tree, The Witness of Combines

“The lives of those who homesteaded in Dakota Territory were difficult; the men and women tough enough to survive were not always kind and well-behaved. Dawn Wink’s Meadowlark thunders with harsh truths learned from her own ranching family history, including her knowledge of Lakota ways. And in these pages the prairie sings its truths.”     — Linda Hasselstrom, South Dakota Author of the Year, No Place Like Home: Notes from a Western Life,         Between Grass and Sky, Feels Like Far, Land Circle, Going Over East, Windbreak

“Meadowlark is in the tradition of the American Western Novel, but with a twist. The heroes of this heart-felt book are the women who populated the mythic west and the reader gets a credible glimpse of what life might have been like for them. Many of the scenes ring true due to the author’s obvious familiarity with the inner workings of a ranch, her interest in the plight of her characters, and her love of the land.”     — Dan O’Brien, Two time winner of the Western Heritage Award, Buffalo for the Broken Heart (South Dakota One Book 2009), The Contract Surgeon, Stolen Horses, The Indian Agent

Prairie, June 2013

“Meadowlark is a love story of the best kind: achingly real. At its center is Grace, a turn-of-the-previous-century teenaged bride battered by her husband and left alone for days on the isolated South Dakota prairie with her young son and a ranch to care for. Grace learns to love the tough and surprisingly beautiful prairie, the horse on whose back she finds freedom, her son, the women friends who become her family, and finally, her own scarred self. This haunting story soars like the song of the meadowlark it is named for, determined to be heard.”     — Susan J. Tweit, Colorado Book Award Winner. Walking Nature Home, Season’s in the Desert, Barren, Wild, and Worthless

“This heroine’s quest for meaning in the shadow of an abusive marriage is every bit as lonely and piercing as a meadowlark’s song heard over miles of empty prairie.”     — Jamie Lisa Forbes, Unbroken, 2011 WILLA winner for Outstanding Literary Fiction.

With unprecedented lyric beauty, Dawn Wink brings the myriad chambers of Grace’s inquisitive mind and indelible spirit alive to the point where no reader will ever forget her story.     — Laurie Wagner Buyer, author of the award-winning memoirs When I Came West and Spring’s Edge: A  Ranch Wife’s Chronicles 

Meadowlark will be released by Pronghorn Press the end of July, 2013.