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1-Page Summary of Heartland

Overall Summary

Heartland is a memoir about Sarah Smarsh and her experiences growing up in rural Kansas. It’s also an analysis of why people who are honest, hardworking, and motivated can’t get out of poverty.

The book is a memoir of the author’s life. It tells us about her parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents. All of them were born in times when people struggled to make ends meet and lived their lives just above poverty level. The family moved around many times but they always found new opportunities to improve their situation or escaped bad circumstances. They also worked hard at physically demanding jobs to get by and provide for their families.

This book is an analytical work that traces the socioeconomic divide in America. It considers why people are poor and what disadvantages they face, as well as what causes them to feel shame for being poor.

Throughout the book, Smarsh’s goal is to disprove the assumption that people are poor because they lack work ethic. She shows that her family and other poor people like them do not lack work ethic; in fact, they work as hard or harder than most groups. The way that America values certain jobs over others causes this inequality. Although Smarsh doesn’t offer any solutions to fix this system, she does believe in a future of greater equality for everyone.

Prologue: “Dear August”

In the prologue, Sarah Smarsh writes to her imaginary child, August. She discusses how she feels about having a child and what she would want for that child.

By explaining to August that she was raised in a family with few economic opportunities, Smarsh also explains to the reader that the book that follows is about her journey from a poor family into a different kind of life. The storyteller creates an objective view by telling us about her past experiences and how they shaped who she is today. Although it’s not necessarily subjective, this perspective comes as a shock because we’re taught to believe that people are responsible for their own successes or failures.

Chapter 1: “A penny in a purse”

The author begins the book by describing her own birth and how it was unplanned. She then goes on to discuss her mother’s birth, as well as some of the struggles that both women faced growing up as a result of their being teen mothers. The author also mentions how she sees class divisions in America and describes them as peculiar, contradictory places for working-class whites.

Smarsh describes Betty’s early life. She had Jeannie at 16 and then moved to Chicago where she worked several jobs and lived in a rundown apartment. She wrote letters to her mother about how much money she needed for various things, like food or rent.

According to Smarsh, the women in her family and poor women all over move around a lot. They do this to escape men and work hard at their jobs so that they can provide for their children. The jobs they have are low-paying, but nevertheless they work hard at them. Betty’s nomadic lifestyle seemed to end when she met Arnie who owned a farm in Kansas that became an important touchpoint for her life and the lives of others. She met him at a barn dance, but their relationship started one year later after she had married someone else. Even though Betty was from town and worked as a clerk at the courthouse in Wichita, she married Arnie and moved with 15-year-old Jeannie (Smarsh’s imaginary daughter) to his farm where he grew corn on 100 acres of land which were rented out by another farmer named Mr. Wilson who lived nearby with his wife Nellie Mae whom he called “Mae” or “Miss Nellie” even though it was not her name; Mae would help take care of August while Betty went out into the fields during harvest time or took off on errands into town without telling anyone where she was going; sometimes men came around looking for her because there were rumors about what kind of woman she is—a no good whore; people would gossip about how beautiful Betty looked without realizing how much hardship she had been through including being raped twice by different men: once when living in California with Denny before moving back home again only to be raped again by William (her ex-husband); Smarsh explains why these rapes happened: