Windfall

October 15, 2022
A journalist investigates the life of her great-grandmother in the context of mineral rights, the oil and gas industry, and the American promise that anyone could get rich. In this mix of history, memoir, and environmental writing, Bolstad, a former reporter for Climatewire, begins with an introduction to Anna Josephine Sletvold, her great-grandmother. The daughter of Norwegian immigrants, Anna homesteaded in North Dakota and, according to family lore, disappeared in 1907. "More than a century later, an oil company sent my mother a $2,400 check," writes Bolstad. "The oil company was leasing mineral rights along the edges of the booming Bakken oil fields of North Dakota. From the oil company, my mother learned she was an heir to mineral rights below the surface of the land where Anna once had a homestead." Following the death of her mother three months later, the author began her research, seeking information about her great-grandmother, how her family ended up with the mineral rights, and how this fit into the refrain that "my mother had heard all her life: We could be rich." In addition to her personal story, Bolstad discusses the Homestead Act and its repercussions over time as well as the "multiple boom and bust cycles" in the North Dakota oil patch. Some of the problems associated with these cycles involve crowded, unsafe Walmart parking lots filled with oil workers, businesses struggling to survive on the promise of a potential windfall, and the many "toxic myths of manifest destiny." By moving back and forth through her own life, her family members' lives, and the realities of how oil booms have affected states like North Dakota over time, the author effectively examines the political, economic, and environmental issues involved in the production of energy across the country. An engrossing look at the effects of the American oil and gas industry through the lens of family history.

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November 1, 2022

What is more appealing than the thought of an easy way to strike it rich? This thought is the underlying theme of this book by Bolstad, a journalist and documentary filmmaker. With her unexpected mineral rights inheritance in hand and stories about her family, Bolstad journeys to North Dakota to uncover what happened to her great-grandmother, Anna, and how the mineral right came to be. Her book is filled with expertly researched details about the history of oil in the United States, including the politics and racial injustices surrounding the exploration for oil. It's also interwoven with personal stories and the mystery surrounding Anna. While being an informative book, the woven tale feels disjointed and unbalanced with a heavy focus on the oil industry, which takes away from the main draw to the book: Anna. VERDICT This book will appeal to readers who enjoy detailed political history books and those looking to learn a little more about the history of little discussed aspects of the Midwest.--Leah Fitzgerald

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 21, 2022
In this powerful debut, journalist Bolstad investigates a century-old family mystery involving the disappearance of her great-grandmother. All Bolstad knew about Anna Josephine Sletvold, a Norwegian woman who settled in the prairies of North Dakota, was that she disappeared from her homestead in 1907. In 2009, after Bolstad’s mother received a surprise check from an oil company that leased land near where Anna once lived, Bolstad started researching Anna’s life. What she learned is that Anna filed a homestead claim in the fall of 1905. Less than two years later, a judge declared Anna insane after a doctor diagnosed her with what is now known as postpartum depression, and she was committed to an asylum, where she remained until her death in 1921. Along the way, Bolstad chronicles North Dakota’s history of “boom and bust cycles,” details how the Homestead Act of 1862 allowed the federal government to displace Indigenous peoples so that millions of settlers could claim a “new start,” and indicts the oil industry for its reliance on such disputed practices as fracking and flaring. Bolstad approaches Anna’s story with empathy, and she lucidly explains the impact of oil and gas extraction on the communities that depend on it economically. In unraveling a family mystery, Bolstad tells a much larger, richer story.

Starred review from November 1, 2022
In this perceptive and timely memoir, Bolstad simultaneously researches her great-grandmother's life and the oil industry's impact on her 160-acre parcel of North Dakota land. With the long-held family story of spunky homesteader Anna as her starting point, environmental issues reporter Bolstad sets out to learn more about Anna's questionable death and if the land, with mineral rights still partly owned by the family, might ever receive a royalty windfall. In an often gripping fashion, she documents her travels to archives and oil fields as she seeks to understand both the boom-and-bust economics of fossil-fuel extraction and the complicated relationship North Dakotans have with the Bakken oil fields. Bolstad does not shy away from the devastation wrought by white settlers, including her ancestors, upon Native Americans, but it is the shocks of Anna's life and her mother's before her that roil the narrative. Derailed from her planned straightforward tale, Bolstad finds herself unexpectedly studying the ugly collision of postpartum depression and women committed to asylums in a twist she never imagined. All the while she maintains an unwavering determination to learn more about what the oil industry giveth and then taketh away. Shockingly personal and brilliantly researched, Windfall is highly recommended.

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