SDHC Announces 2025 One Book Selections
January 18, 2025
The South Dakota Humanities Council is proud to announce the One Book selections that will educate and engage South Dakotans of all ages in 2025.
Throughout the year, SDHC will share unique and meaningful stories from and about the state via the 2025 One Book South Dakota, The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota and an American Inheritance by Rebecca Clarren, and the 2025 Young Readers One Book, Wings of an Eagle: The Gold Medal Dreams of Billy Mills, co-written by Billy Mills and Donna Janell Bowman and illustrated by S.D. Nelson.
The authors and illustrator will appear at the 23rd annual South Dakota Festival of Books, Sept. 26-28 in Spearfish. Mills, Bowman, and Nelson will also speak in the Rapid City area on Sept. 25, while Clarren will visit several communities this summer on her One Book Author Tour.
Both titles were featured at last year’s Festival, but naming them as One Books allows SDHC to share them with many more South Dakotans, said Jennifer Widman, director of the South Dakota Center for the Book.
“These presenters made a powerful impression on our Festival audiences in 2024,” Widman said. “Now, we want their thought-provoking work to reach even more readers. Not only will we connect with adults in communities of all sizes across South Dakota, but we will also put a truly inspiring book in the hands of every third grader in the state. ”
About The Cost of Free Land and Rebecca Clarren
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 and becoming an American immigrant success story.
What none of Clarren’s ancestors ever mentioned was that their land, the foundation for much of their wealth, had been cruelly and illegally taken from the Lakota by the United States government. In The Cost of Free Land, Clarren melds investigative reporting with personal family history to reveal the intertwined stories of her family and the Lakota, and the devastating cycle of loss of Indigenous land, culture, and resources that continues today.
Clarren is excited about sharing her work with more South Dakota readers. She hopes it encourages them to consider the consequences of our national legacy of dispossession and to imagine what, now, can be done.
“What an honor for The Cost of Free Land to be selected as the One Book South Dakota for this year,” Clarren said. “South Dakota Humanities’ efforts to think deeply about our American past and its legacy give me hope for the future. I hope South Dakota readers will deepen their connection to this remarkable state through learning more about our entangled history.”
Clarren has been writing about the American West for more than 20 years. She is the winner of the 2021 Whiting Nonfiction Grant for her work on The Cost of Free Land. Her journalism, for which she has won the Hillman Prize, an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship, and 10 grants from the Fund for Investigative Journalism, has appeared in such publications as Mother Jones, High Country News, The Nation, and Indian Country Today. Her debut novel, Kickdown, was shortlisted for the PEN/Bellwether Prize.
About Wings of an Eagle and Its Creators
Wings of an Eagle: The Gold Medal Dreams of Billy Mills is the autobiographical tale of Lakota Olympian Billy Mills, who overcame poverty, racism, and health challenges to win the gold medal in the men’s 10,000-meter race at the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games. In 2024, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of his stunning come-from-behind win, Mills teamed up with co-author Donna Janell Bowman and Lakota illustrator S.D. Nelson to create an inspiring children’s book, infused with the lessons of his Indigenous ancestors who stood strong when the odds were against them.
Mills, an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, is the only American ever to have won the Olympic gold medal in the 10,000-meter run, a victory considered one of the greatest upsets in Olympic history. He grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation, attended the University of Kansas, served in the U.S. Marine Corps, and founded Running Strong for American Indian Youth. An internationally known speaker and author, Mills now lives in California.
Bowman writes inspiring picture books including Step Right Up: How Doc and Jim Key Taught the World About Kindness (winner of the 2019 South Dakota Prairie Pasque Book Award) and King of the Tightrope: When the Great Blondin Ruled Niagara. Her books have been nominated for almost a dozen state book awards, among other honors. Armed with an MFA in Writing, Bowman works and lives in central Texas.
Nelson is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe who also has Norse heritage. He has written and illustrated numerous children’s picture books – most recently, Grandma’s Tipi – and the YA novel Crazy Horse and Custer: Born Enemies. Nelson’s books have received the American Indian Library Association Honor Book Award, two Western Writers of America Spur Awards, and two American Library Association Notable Book Awards.
About the One Book Programs
Since 2003, SDHC’s One Book South Dakota program has encouraged people across the state to read and discuss the same book throughout the year. For more information or to apply to host a discussion, please visit https://sdhumanities.org/one-book-sd/. Copies of The Cost of Free Land will soon be available via the SDHC lending library, and groups may also engage an SDHC scholar to lead their discussion if desired.
The Young Readers One Book program began in 2014 to encourage enthusiasm for reading among youth. For more information, please visit https://sdhumanities.org/young-readers/. Special edition copies of Wings of an Eagle will arrive this summer and be distributed to third graders in public, private, tribal, and alternative schools at the beginning of the 2025-2026 school year.
Learn more about humanities programming in South Dakota by signing up for SDHC e-Updates!