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If you would like Ann to join your book club discussion in person or by speaker phone, contact her at ann@annweisgarber.com.
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The Personal History of Rachel DuPree

I still see her, our Liz, sitting on a plank, dangling over that well. She held on to the rope that hung from the pulley, her bare feet pressed together so tight that the points on her ankle bones were nearly white.

So begins The Personal History of Rachel DuPree, an unforgettable novel about love and loyalty, homeland and belonging.

Announcement

The Promise, a novel about a marriage at the time of the historic 1900 Galveston hurricane, will be published in England by Mantle (Pan Macmillan) in March 2013.

Honors

Film rights optioned by Viola Davis's (The Help, Doubt, Fences) JuVee Productions.

An American Bookseller Association August 2011 Indie Next List Great Reads (paperback).

Shortlisted for the 2011 Ohioana Book Award (Fiction).

Recipient of the Langum Prize for American Historical Fiction for 2010.

Recipient of the 2009 Steven Turner Award for Best Work of First Fiction sponsored by the Texas Institute of Letters.

Shortlisted for England's Orange Award for New Writers 2009.

Longlisted for England's Orange Prize for Fiction 2009.

Selected by Barnes & Noble for its Discover Great New Writers program, Fall 2010.

Listen to Ann's interview on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition.

View the Honors & Events Page for other awards and upcoming events.

Quotes

"An indelibly affecting teaching story: How unchecked selfish desires, regardless of their origins in historical cruelty and deprivation, lead inevitably to suffering. A suffering that can be alleviated only by the realization of a pure love for others greater than one's desires for self. Rachel and Isaac DuPree and their tiny, vulnerable family stand as monuments to the forgotten millions of brutal, spirit deforming choices made and endured by so many brave and deeply wounded Americans."
-Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple

"A brave, beautifully rendered novel of early twentieth century America that speaks directly to the twenty-first century notion of a post-racial world. It is a tribute to Ann Weisgarber's subtle writing and vivid characterizations that I was well into The Personal History of Rachel DuPree before I realized her settlers in the unforgiving Dakota badlands are African-Americans. Rachel is an extraordinary creation who will capture your imagination, break your heart, and inflame your hope. Isaac, her fierce, loving, stubborn husband will both seduce and infuriate the reader, just as he does Rachel. This is a stunning novel, so accomplished, insightful, and deeply affecting that it is hard to believe is it Weisgarber's debut. I can't wait for her next."
-Ellen Feldman, author of Scottsboro and The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank

"It is through our fiction that Americans have best honored the diversity and richness of our culture and history. In The Personal History of Rachel DuPree Ann Weisgarber tells the story of an African American family struggling to survive in the Dakota Badlands with a vividness and intensity by turns heart-breaking and thrilling. It is a story of human betrayal and human love, and a woman you will not soon forget."
-Robert Morgan, author of Gap Creek

"An essential American story etched in vividly remarkable prose, of a unique period in our history, The Personal History of Rachel DuPree beats with the timeless heart of human endeavors, yet drops us seamlessly into particular spaces and times, a grand achievement of the first rate. Some will call this a novel of race, some will see the futility of the dustbowl settlement, some will believe it to be a tale of a strong woman. It's all of these and so much more, most clearly a tale that will hold and resonate on many levels."
-Jeffrey Lent, author of In the Fall

"Ann Weisgarber has written an astonishing novel of the pioneering West-a novel as beautiful, profound, and unsentimental as those of Rolvaag and Cather. And yet her story feels brand new, its insights into race in America poignant and timely. The Personal History of Rachel DuPree is the finest novel I've read this year. I can't wait to read her next one."
-Lin Enger, author of Undiscovered Country

"Ann Weisgarber has taken a solitary haunting image and created an entire family and hard landscape and an indomitable character, Rachel DuPree, whom I worried about for several days as I raced through this novel. Rachel's story has never been told, and she is a singular heroine in a vivid and heartless world."
-Susan Straight, author of Highwire Moon and A Million Nightingales

"The Personal History of Rachel DuPree is a wonderful addition to the literature of the Great Plains. Ann Weisgarber not only locates a bright, clear voice in that vast, silent region but does so in a much-neglected part of its population. This is a brave, lovely novel."
-Larry Watson, author of Montana 1948 and Orchard

"In The Personal History of Rachel DuPree Ann Weisgarber has created characters of great strength and dignity in an exciting, fast moving novel about courage in the face of the terrible truth. You will inhabit the lives of these characters as you read the novel, and long after you're done, the characters will inhabit your life. This is a tremendous start in what will be a fine career for Ann Weisgarber. She's a great storyteller."
-Thomas Cobb, author of Crazy Heart and Shavetail