Sweet Promised Land
Class of 2011
Summer Scholars Program
About
The Summer Scholars Project aims to welcome incoming freshmen to the campus community by engaging them in a common experience — reading a thought-provoking book.
The book chosen for 2007 is Robert Laxalt’s Sweet Promised Land. Celebrating its 50th anniversary, the “affectionate memoir” chronicles Laxalt’s experiences with his father, Dominique, who emigrated from the Basque Country of southwest France to the high desert of northern Nevada.
A complimentary book will be sent out to all incoming freshmen who have registered for classes. At New Student Orientation (http://www.ss.unr.edu/nso/) on August 23, faculty volunteers from numerous disciplines will lead groups in discussing the book and its relevance today.
Sweet Promised Land (1957)
Dominique Laxalt was sixteen when he left the French Pyrenees for America. He became a sheepherder in the Nevada desert and nearby hills of the Sierra. Like all his fellow Basque immigrants, Dominique dreamed of someday returning to the land of his beginnings. Most Basques never made the journey back, but Dominique finally did return for a visit with family and friends. Sweet Promised Land is the story of that trip, told by his son Robert, who accompanied him to the pastoral mountain village of Tardets in France.
Dominique came home victorious, the adventurer who had conquered the unknown and found his fortune in the New World. He walked the paths of his youth and again experienced the traditions of his Basque heritage. He told of his life in America, the hardships and challenges, and began to realize that he had changed since his departure from Tardets. By the end of the visit, he knew with certainty where he belonged.
Sweet Promised Land was first published in 1957 by Harper & Row. During the past fifty years, the book has become a classic in Western American literature, still beloved by the Basque-American community and widely used in undergraduate classes. In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the book's publication, western literature scholar Ann Ronald has written a new foreword, discussing the book in the context of American and Nevada literature.
Robert Laxalt (1923 -2001)
The son of Basque immigrants, Robert Laxalt referred to the Nevada State Library in Carson City as his second home during his childhood. He was the editor of his sixth grade newspaper -- which published a prediction that he'd have a successful career as a writer. He later studied Basque culture in France and Spain as a Fulbright scholar and eventually, in fulfillment of that childhood prophecy, earned a reputation as a writer's writer. In his early career as a journalist, he wrote for the Nevada Appeal, Nevada State Journal, and was a staff correspondent for United Press International. He launched the Capital News Service in 1947. He was the Nevada correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and the Nevada political correspondent for the New York Times. He also sold nonfiction articles and short stories to leading national magazines. He was a revered teacher and the voice of the Basque immigrants in America.
(Read the full biography: http://www.library.unr.edu/friends/hallfame/laxalt.html)