Heartland
Sarah Smarsh was raised on a wheat farm outside Wichita, Kansas, the daughter and granddaughter of teen mothers, in a family that worked hard and stayed broke. In Heartland she tells that story and uses it to ask why so many people who labor constantly in the richest country on earth still cannot get ahead. She writes about farm work, fragile finances, the dignity and grind of rural life, and the political and economic forces that shaped her family. The book was a finalist for the National Book Award and a Sarah Jessica Parker ALA Book Club Central pick.
What you might want to know about Heartland
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A journalist who grew up on a Kansas farm in a family of working poor examines class in America through the story of her own childhood.
Yes. It is Sarah Smarsh's memoir of growing up in a working-poor family on a Kansas farm, combined with reporting on class and economic inequality in America.
It was a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction and was chosen by Sarah Jessica Parker as an ALA Book Club Central pick in 2018.
Heartland was written by Sarah Smarsh, published in 2018 by Scribner.
Heartland is 304 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Heartland takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
Heartland is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
