Mountain & Prairie Podcast

Rebecca Clarren is an award-winning journalist who has been writing about the American West for more than twenty years. Her most recent book is titled "The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance." The book is a powerful, nuanced, and deeply personal exploration of her ancestors fleeing antisemitism in Russia and immigrating to the South Dakota prairie at the turn of the 20th century. I was lucky enough to receive an advanced copy of the book, and I absolutely loved it. Rebecca seamlessly weaves together heavily researched US and Native American history with a vulnerable, clear-eyed examination of her family’s legacy. The result is an engaging story that not only helped me better understand the past, but provided a blueprint for how we can begin to make amends and move forward, both individually and as a nation. - In "The Cost of Free Land," Rebecca grapples with the complicated ripple effects of her family settling on the Great Plains– the free land that they received from the US g