A deeply human story of one woman’s connections to her family and the land. – Michael Steinberg, editor of Fourth Genre

Self-discovery and spontaneity combined with rich and textured descriptions of home and family make these essays sensitive and compelling. – Lee Gutkind, editor of Creative Nonfiction

Julene Bair has written a powerful elegy—flinty and tender—for American farm life, and a daughter’s story of fierce family struggle and even fiercer love. These linked essays have the immediacy of fiction and an enduring wisdom attaining to history. –Patricia Hampl

With the big Kansas sky and endless acres of wheat as a backdrop, One Degree West is a luminous account of life on the western plains. Told both from the solitary perspective of a girl gazing at the immense night sky, the toes of her boots poked through a wire fence, and the thoughtful and intelligent woman she becomes, these essays are profound and beautiful. – JoAnn Beard, author of Boys of My Youth

From childhood to motherhood, from seedtime to harvest, One Degree West vividly bears witness to the bittersweet lot of a woman’s life on the farm. Fraught with the challenging weather of existence on the edge of the Plains, Julene Bair’s essay collection is much more than a personal story. It’s a haunting family saga, an eloquent tribute to a passing way of life by a person who passed it by—a new farming classic. – Carl Klaus, author of My Vegetable Love and Weathering Winter