Think Out Loud

In ‘Windfall,’ a mineral rights inheritance sparks a journey of personal discovery and family tragedy


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In 2009, Portland-based journalist Erika Bolstad’s mother received a check in the mail from an oil company that was leasing mineral rights she had inherited in North Dakota. After her mother died, Bolstad embarked on a decade-long quest to uncover the history behind those rights, including the story of her great-grandmother Anna, who left little trace of her life as a homesteader in North Dakota in the early 1900s. In “Windfall,” Bolstad constructs a memoir revealing a tale of family tragedy and personal discovery that intersects with the boom and bust of oil derricks and natural gas flares dotting the Dakota prairies, and the price paid for the lure of riches trapped beneath the soil. Journalist and author Erika Bolstad joins us to talk about her new book, “Windfall: The prairie woman who lost her way and the great-granddaughter who found her.”
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Think Out LoudBy Oregon Public Broadcasting

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