"The high plains, the beginning of the desert West, often act as a crucible for those who inhabit them. Like Jacob's angel, the region requires that you wrestle with it before it bestows a blessing."

With those opening lines of Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, Kathleen Norris had me hooked. I am a child of the desert West. My great-grandparents came west in a covered wagon and settled in eastern Oregon, which you could call it "the end of the desert West." I grew up on a farm. My parents, and my father's parents and grandparents before them, spent their lives wrestling with that land, wrestling and sometimes losing, but nonetheless receiving blessings.

I invested little when I bought Dakota (my copy has the "Special Value" price-tag of $3.98), but the book changed my life. Norris is a Benedictine Oblate, and there is a direct line between this book and the fact that I, too, am now a Benedictine Oblate. Dakota was my first exposure to Norris' work; I have been enriched many times since, and many times over, by reading her and by hearing her speak.

Still, twenty years after Dakota was published, I keep going back to it. Norris' writing is eloquent and her thinking often profound. Yet the entire book is about everyday life, the kind of life that demands that you wrestle with it before it bestows a blessing.

Born and bred in the rural west, I deeply understand the scene where Norris describes the strange behavior of some farmers at a funeral: "As people gathered for the graveside service, the men, some kneeling, began studying the open grave. It was early November, and someone explained that they were checking the frost and moisture levels in the ground. They were farmers and ranchers worried about a drought. They were mourners giving a good friend back to the earth. They were people of earth, looking for a sign of hope."

So are we all. I found, and continue to find, many signs of hope in Dakota, including this marvelous quote from St. Hilary: "Everything that seems empty is full of the angels of God."