Lost Without the River

"...this volume of reminiscences charts not just the stories of [Scoblic's] youth, but also the ways those things have shaped and weighed on her throughout her adulthood. The author’s prose is lyrical and highly observant...."—Kirkus Reviews

“Barbara Scoblic’s Lost Without the River is a virtual literary symphony fusing memoir, history, and geography. Her descriptions of South Dakota's farms, rivers, and glacial lakes are as vivid as her portraits of three generations of her family and their relationships. She may have achieved a modern classic.”—Sidney Offit, author of Memoir of the Bookie's Son

"There are some writers who can sing the song of even a small and remote place and through some magic transform it into a siren call. Barbara Scoblic is one of those writers!" —Lewis Frumkes, Director of The Writing Center at Hunter College

"Enter Barbara Scoblic's world where opera reigns in the kitchen on Saturday afternoons, where the winter is long and loss is real. Her writing beautifully teases up the questions of life, love, and how much of a hold our past really has on us." —Marion Roach Smith, author of The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life “Her large farming family was always in flux, hardworking and bone weary, yet there is a quiet intimacy conveyed in the lean prose of Barbara Scoblic’s memoir, where simple gestures, like ironing blouses before a sister leaves for college, carry unspoken love and yearning.” —Elizabeth Garber, author of Implosion: A Memoir of an Architect's Daughter