rattlesnake summer
“Rattlesnake Summer is a deeply enthralling poetic road trip around South Dakota. These literary snapshots of daily life are offered with a keen eye, a generous heart, and reading this book is like riding shotgun with Vondracek as he moves from town to town, county to county. We encounter corn mazes, ranchers, gas stations, weddings, thoughts on Terry Redlin paintings, being at Big Bat’s in Pine Ridge, observing a Rocky Mountain oyster feed, watching prisoners play ball in Yankton, and much more. One of my favorite lines in this truly excellent collection is ‘Sometimes I think the West is/ wherever the highway takes you./ Other times, I think it’s just when/ you run out of words.’ Happily, Vondracek has no shortage of words and, in reading this, we see our state anew. This poetic travel guide of roadside attractions will be read for years to come.”
Patrick Hicks, author of The Commandant of Lubizec and Library of the Mind, and In the Shadow of Dora
“Two things: Vondracek's social media profile pictures are an old pickup truck and he and his wife, hands raised, on their wedding day. He's got Edward Hopper's curiosity and Ted Kooser's zoom lens. This debut is full of rhythm, inimitable heart. Discovery, not display."
Jim Reese, author of Bone Chalk
“In this remarkable book, Rattlesnake Summer, Christopher Vondracek turns the eye of a journalist on every one of the sixty-six counties of South Dakota. As a reporter, he explains, he would do his job, and then ‘wander around,’ talking to people about whatever topic came up. ‘More than any aesthetic, what I wanted to do was to name the people, homes, towns, farms, ranches, volunteer fire departments, stray dogs, horse-dappled meadows, and tree professors of this state in a poem.’ So his poems tell us about a ‘girl with love in her hair,’ and ‘a casino that glows like a Dairy Queen.’ The reporter sees ‘a man remove his teeth to play a harmonica,’ and knows that ‘a lone tree in Tripp County’ likely means a homestead was there. Someone planted that tree with hope to create a farm home, but even a good reporter cannot know how the story ended. Cleverly and with skill, Vondracek observes and comments on other enigmas that emerge from—or are hidden in—news from across the state. ‘Sometimes,’ he says, ‘I think the West is/ wherever the highway takes you./ Other times, I think it’s just when/ you run out of words.’ I doubt Christopher Vondracek will ever run out of words.”
Linda Hasselstrom, author of Roadside History of South Dakota, Write Now, Here's How -- Insights from Six Decades of Writing and Gathering from the Grassland: A Plains Journal.
The Author
Christopher Vondracek reported on rattlesnakes & politicians, dinosaur lawsuits & prairie-dog infestations in South Dakota for The Rapid City Journal and Courthouse News. A former college English teacher, Vondracek holds a bachelor’s in journalism and master’s in English from the University of South Dakota, as well as a creative writing MFA from Hamline University. His writing has appeared in Cutbank, Passages North, and Structo. Raised in Wells, Minnesota, the writer took trips into the Big Sioux and Jim River country as a boy to visit family. On a summer day in 2018, Vondracek drove from the Black Hills to Yankton to marry his bride. They served kuchen and kolaches at a reception in an old brewery over the Missouri River. A culture reporter for The Washington Times, Vondracek and his wife, Carrie, hang a “Wall Drug” sign in their home on Capitol Hill.