The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance

Books

Winner of the Will Rogers Medallion Award for Western Nonfiction Finalist for The Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize Shortlisted for The William Saroyan International Prize A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year "Sharply insightful . . . A monumental piece of work."-The Boston Globe An award-winning author investigates the entangled history of her Jewish ancestors' land in South Dakota and the Lakota, who were forced off that land by the United States government Growing up, Rebecca Clarren only knew the major plot points of her tenacious immigrant family's origins. Her great-great-grandparents, the Sinykins, and their six children fled antisemitism in Russia and arrived in the United States at the turn of the 20th century, ultimately settling on a 160-acre homestead in South Dakota. Over the next few decades, despite tough years on a merciless prairie and multiple setbacks, the Sinykins became an American immigrant success story. What none of Clarren's ancestors ever mentioned was that ...