Brooding Upon the Waters

When thirty years of untreated bipolar disorder left his father fighting for his life, Howard Schaap began to wonder how this man had fallen so far-from Minnesota's Young Farmer of the Year to financial failure in the farm crisis to a bed in the neurology wing of Mayo Clinic. Brooding Upon the Waters is Howard Schaap's memoir-at once deeply compassionate and searingly honest-of his father's anguished journey. In his search for answers, Howard looks first to the landscape itself, where hard-luck fishing trips to the mud lakes of the tallgrass prairie mirrored his father's dark moods and darkening theology. But there is also local history, where his father's fall from grace, his manic decisions, and his political swing-not simply from moderate Republican to fervent populist, but "from someone broad-minded and warm-hearted to someone narrow and bitter"-have a precedent in American letters and history: Midwest settler Charles Ingalls, "Pa" in the famous Little House on the Prairie books. Brooding Upon the Waters recreates the stark beauty and haunting isolation of growing up on a failing family farm in the 1980s and 1990s. Along the way, Howard Schaap grapples with how these forces-as disparate as distorted theology and short-sighted financial greed-complicate his own struggle to remain loyal to the place he has always called home. Brooding Upon the Waters recounts not only a mental health crisis but also a crisis of the American Dream in the Upper Midwest, America's lost landscape.

About the Author :
Howard Schaap is a professor of English at Dordt University and a lifelong resident of southwest Minnesota, specifically the former tall grass prairie landscape of the Buffalo Ridge. He has an MA in English Literature from South Dakota State University and an MFA from Seattle Pacific University. He and his wife Keodouangsy (Sy) have three adult children and a Labra-pointer-aner named Kylo. This is his first book.

Review :
Howard Schaap's Brooding Upon the Waters is an exploration of mental illness and its repercussions, a meditation on land and place, a reflection on fishing as both dream and reality, a commentary on America's failures and promises, and an exploration of the nature of spirituality. It's also a poignant hymn of love for an imperfect but wonderful father and an imperfect but wonderful landscape. Schaap holds it all together with precise and beautiful prose. I loved the book from the first page on and was continually absorbed by its insights. Kent Meyers, author of The Witness of Combines and Twisted Tree Once in a great while, the story of one man's hard life can explain the demise of an entire culture. A hauntingly tragic tale told with immense tenderness, Brooding Upon the Waters sheds the light of grace upon our troubled times. Never have I read a more beautifully written, profoundly loving memoir from the heart of America's heartland. Paula Huston, author of The Hermits of Big Sur At once philosophical and deeply heartfelt, Howard Schaap's debut is a memoir rooted in the isolated and often stoic Midwest. Brooding Upon the Waters offers a glimpse into one all-American life even as it offers a broader understanding of where we are and how we got here. Nicole Baart, author of Everything We Didn't Say