Bone Chalk unravels the rural-urban divide

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

Soul. What does that mean? Does it even exist? If you want an answer to that question, then author Jim Reese’s book, Bone Chalk, will take you on a journey of discovery toward the truth. Hands down, Reese, as a writer, is the Jack Kerouac of the Heartland. He writes with soul, with the beat of his bone’s chalk, about growing up in the big city and moving to rural America to lay down roots.

I did the opposite. I grew up in a small city surrounded by dairy farms and moved to “the big city” after college, then to more big cities as I pursued a newspaper career in an often ruthless and always-evolving media industry. Along the way, I indulged in the anonymity, opportunities and freedom of the big city and its dazzling allure. In trade, my memory of the small city I grew up in has faded into fractured vignettes. The price of it all was losing a sense of my roots, as I transported them across the nation like a potted plant.

Reese’s book is a collection of essays about his life and planting roots in rural America; about crime and punishment (with an up-close view of his teaching experiences in rural prisons and beyond); about misunderstandings and revelations; about life and death under a glittering dome of stars not obscured by big city lights and exhaust. It helped me to reassemble the disconnected and distant lived experiences of my youth in the small city that formed the essence of my own bone’s chalk as a writer. His book was very much a rewarding, insightful read that helped me confront my rural past and reconnect it with my urban present — and made a future path forward for me, and America, seem far less daunting in the bargain.

Jim Reese is associate professor of English and director of the Great Plains Writers’ Tour at Mount Marty University in Yankton, South Dakota. You can order Bone Chalk via Amazon.