Our Lady Of The Prairie by Thisbe Nissen

Naturally, she does what any newly liberated woman would do: she takes a match to her life on the prairie and then steps back to survey the wreckage.

There, Phillipa must endure (among other things) a wedding-day tornado, a menace of a mother-in-law who may or may not have been a Nazi collaborator, and the tragicomic revenge fantasies of her heretofore docile husband. After falling headlong into a passionate affair during a semester spent teaching in Ohio, Phillipa returns home to Iowa for her daughter Ginny's wedding. 'Brazen, sexy, and whip-smart.Our Lady of the Prairie is a sharp and bitingly funny novel about a professor whose calm-ish midwestern life gives way to a vortex of crises-and her attempts to salvage the pieces without going to pieces herself. In the space of a few torrid months on the Iowa prairie, Phillipa Maakestad-long-married theater professor and mother of an unstable daughter-grapples with a life turned upside down. 'Brazen, sexy, and whip-smart.' - Refinery29 'Wonderfully witty.' - Chicago Review of Books Our Lady of the Prairie is a bravura performance-a twister sweeping through the heart of the land and the land of the heart. Thisbe Nissen offers up a fever-pitched, bitingly funny novel about a woman's quest to find her place in her own story. Which is to say: the damage is not easily contained, and the path ahead is not clear. What better moment, then, to fall headlong into a passionate affair, fly off to France with her new lover, and effectively take a match to her life on the Iowa prairie?Īs she steps back to survey the damage and determine her way forward, Phillipa must contend with a wedding-day tornado, a menace of a mother-in-law who may or may not have been a Nazi collaborator, and the tragicomic revenge fantasies of her otherwise docile husband. It just made my whole being vibrate and hum with the impossible, inevitable business of loving other people.' - Leslie Jamison, New York Times best-selling author of The Empathy Exams and The Recoveringįor Phillipa Maakestad-theater professor and mother to a troubled, volatile daughter-life is finally, miraculously calm.

'As gripping as it is hilarious.' - Vanity Fair

Our Lady Of The Prairie by Thisbe Nissen