Announcement: PND releases new book about Prairie Churches

Preservation North Dakota announces the publication of Prairie Churches, a new book documenting ten years of church preservation in North Dakota. The old churches on the plains and prairies create a cultural landscape like no other; their steeples rise above the horizon as testaments to faith and community. In 2001 the prairie churches of North Dakota captured the heart of the nation, marking the shift from Most Endangered to the salvation of Save America's Treasures. Preservation North Dakota and its partners invested in the people and places and prairie churches that make North Dakota unique. Prairie Churches is the celebration of all that has been accomplished in the first decade of the new millennium. Written by Lauren Hardmeyer Donovan, the book consists of twenty-six essays recording successful volunteer efforts to save prairie churches with funding from the Grassroots Grant Program at Preservation North Dakota. The book also features a foreword and epilogue by Thomas D. Isern and photographs by John Toso.

 Preservation North Dakota is taking advance orders on its website or by phone at (701) 356-3001; advance orders will be fulfilled in early January 2012. Prairie Churches will also be available on Amazon.com and at local independent booksellers in North Dakota.

Praise for Prairie Churches:

“Prairie Churches… renews our admiration for the faith of our ancestors and reinforces the connection between faith and farming.” — Al Gustin, broadcast journalist and rancher

“Dramatic strokes upon the prairie landscape, the churches of the first settlers continue paying tribute to their founders’ heritage, their faith, their God. Although many of these country edifices have disappeared, the survivors still honor the convictions of the pioneers.

This volume singles out and salutes those houses of worship—powerful monuments to the individual homesteaders and immigrants who determined that a spiritual life was an elementary part of their precarious existence. The enduring survival of these structures is a reminder of the central role that religious belief has played in both the private and the community life of the American countryside.” —Kevin Carvell, noted critic, collector, and connoisseur of North Dakota books