Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1995
Abstract
Chasing Rainbows is the first-person story of Gladys Leffler Gist, a farm woman who was born in Iowa in 1898 and moved to South Dakota five years after her 1921 marriage. Although Gladys and her husband Ray had hard times in their first twenty years of farming and remained tenant farmers almost all their lives, the story is a happy one of a family well integrated into the dominant religious, social and political milieu of rural South Dakota and Iowa. James Marten, whose wife Linda is a granddaughter of the couple, has lovingly but conscientiously edited the work, providing context and explanation that give it form. Information from his interviews with Gist's family members provides balance and perspective that help us better assess Gladys Leffler Gist's point of view.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly 15:2 (Spring 1995). Copyright © 1995 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.