““Hoffert’s writing style and abilities alone are a reason for recommending this book, regardless of a reader’s particular genre interests. She is a master of description, utilizing the least number of words while evoking maximum effect.” ”

““The quiet, lyric prose of Melanie Hoffert’s Prairie Silence crept into my days, making it impossible for me to stop turning pages. This book is about looking for oneself in places we are so often afraid to venture. A beautiful debut from a brave new writer.”

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““In Prairie Silence, Melanie Hoffert shows how the landscapes of our childhood continue to speak to us, and through us, long after we’ve left them behind. In this beautifully written and deeply imagined memoir, Hoffert invites us back to her North Dakota farming community for a season of harvest, a personal journey of profound courage and grace.”

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““Melanie Hoffert has written a gutsy, complicated book about the little town we both came from (but which she experienced in a much, much different way).

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““How is it possible that this reader, committed to city life and wary of the prairie, can experience a pang of longing for empty gravel roads, dying towns, and the intense human connection that resides within the silences of rural North Dakota? It’s a testament to the honest and compelling love story that is Melanie Hoffert’s Prairie Silence. Hoffert’s intimate memoir of place reveals a personal journey both fraught and wondrous, and a present reality of surprising richness. For all the rural ex-patriots who have watched their home places disappear, as well as for city dwellers like me, this book opens the closed world of the prairie, and speaks an enlivening truth.”

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“Melanie Hoffert’s Prairie Silence is about leaving the lands that make us and returning to landscapes that pull us into our truest exploration of self. Read this book if you have ever grappled with faith, sexuality and leaving home; love this book for its beauty, its timeliness, and its devotion to the places that have made us all.

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““It’s a wistful read, full of generosity and love and true admiration for the people back home. But that doesn’t make sharing it easy.””

““What would you do if you hailed from a place where you being gay was the farthest thing from your neighbors’ minds? In “Prairie Silence,” author Melanie Hoffert tackles that, coming from her home state of North Dakota. This is a beautiful book, almost bucolic, and filled with a quiet sense of calm and crops.””

““The author’s mostly quiet narrative includes a wealth of haunting images and ideas that will linger long after the last sentence. A heartfelt love song to a place and its people as well as an honest and rewarding rendering of the author’s interior landscape.””

““In this affecting memoir, Hoffert proves that while you can indeed go home again, it will, of course, never be quite the same. A heartfelt coming-out story as well as an eloquent elegy to a rural way of life that is rapidly vanishing from the American landscape.”

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““Hoffert’s bittersweet and compelling memoir recalls her struggles at ending her silence and creating a fuller life for herself. She illuminates the quiet grace of the people and land she loves and mourns the passing of a way of life.””