One Book Author Rebecca Clarren Tours State May 4-8
April 19, 2025
While writing the 2025 One Book South Dakota, The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance, author Rebecca Clarren discovered a surprisingly intricate web of connections between the successes of her homesteading ancestors and the experiences of the Lakota who had originally lived on that land. This spring, she will share her story directly with readers in eight communities throughout the state.
Sponsored by SDHC, Clarren’s One Book Author Tour runs from May 4-8 and provides opportunities for readers across the state to speak personally with the author.
At each stop, Clarren will talk about her work and its themes, answer questions from community members, and sign books. In addition to the tour, she will speak at the 2025 South Dakota Festival of Books, Sept. 26-28 in Spearfish.
Growing up, 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.”
ONE BOOK SOUTH DAKOTA AUTHOR TOUR SCHEDULE
Sunday, May 4, Rapid City – 6:30 pm MT – South Dakota Public Broadcasting, Black Hills Studio, 415 Main St. For more information, contact Brittany Neiles, (605) 215-6143, brittany.neiles@sdpb.org
Monday, May 5, Lemmon – 1 pm MT – Lemmon Public Library, 303 1st Ave W. For more information, contact Raven Christman (605) 374-5611, lemmonlibrary@outlook.com
Monday, May 5, Eagle Butte – 5:30 pm MT light meal, 6 pm MT presentation – Cheyenne Eagle Butte School Auditorium, 2004 E St. For more information, contact Cherie Farlee, (605) 964-3303,
cheriefarlee072047@gmail.com
Tuesday, May 6, Miller -12 pm CT – Hand County Library, 402 N Broadway. For more information, contact Hannah Caffee, (605) 853-3693, library@handcountysd.org
Tuesday, May 6, Gregory – 6 pm CT – Gregory Public Library, 112 E 5th St. For more information, contact Tara Engel, (605) 350-4241, gregorylibrary@gmail.com
Wednesday, May 7, Yankton -12 pm CT – Yankton Community Library, 515 Walnut St. For more information, contact Kelly O’Dea, (605) 668-5275, kodea@cityofyankton.org
Wednesday, May 7, Sioux Falls – 5 pm CT reception, 6 pm CT presentation – Center for Western Studies at Augustana University, 2121 S Summit Ave. For more information, contact Kamryn Miller, (605) 274.4005, kamryn.miller@augie.edu
Thursday, May 8, Watertown -12 pm Ct – Watertown Regional Library, 160 6th St NE. For more information, contact Laura Hinman, (605) 882-6220, lhinman@watertownsd.us
MORE INFORMATION
About Rebecca Clarren
An award-winning journalist, Clarren has been writing about the American West for more than 25 years. 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. She also writes poetry, with poems appearing in such places as North American Review, Catamaran, Cutbank, and Poetry Northwest.
Rebecca’s latest work, The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance, was named a Best Book of 2023 by Kirkus Books, The Forward, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Tribal College Journal. It won the 2021 Whiting Nonfiction Grant and a Will Rogers Medallion Prize, was shortlisted for the High Plains Book Award and the Great Plains Book Award, and was a finalist for Stanford’s Saroyan Prize. It has also been chosen as the statewide One Book by both North and South Dakota.
About One Book South Dakota
Since 2003, SDHC’s One Book program has encouraged people across South Dakota 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 are available via the SDHC lending library, and groups may engage an SDHC scholar to lead their discussion if desired.
Learn more about humanities programming in South Dakota by signing up for SDHC e-Updates!