Fraser Harrison has been infatuated with South Dakota for more than twenty years and has been there more than a dozen times. In 2012 he wrote a book about South Dakota’s history: Infinite West: Travels in South Dakota, published by the state’s Historical Society Press. He still wants to return, and still cannot explain his love of the place. South Dakota is a forgotten prairie state, with the Missouri River flowing through its centre. The beautiful Black Hills lie to the west and buffalo still roam its grasslands. The Sioux once thought of the state as their land, but they now live in shameful squalor on its nine reservations. Its climate is extreme, yet it was settled by farmer pioneers even though they lost their crops in summer to dust storms and locusts, and their animals in winter to blizzards. South Dakota is famous for the presidents’ faces carved out of Mount Rushmore. It is notorious for Wounded Knee, the last confrontation between the Sioux Indians and the US Army, which resulted in a massacre. These days it is acquiring a reputation as an international tax haven, and its major city, Sioux Falls, is one of the fastest growing in America. The state’s traditional rural community is being hollowed out as young people exchange their traditional trucks for commuters’ saloons. Should we regard South Dakota as a failed experiment? So much suffering has been inscribed on these plains; so much disaster has blown out of the blue sky; so much blood and so many tears have soaked into the dirt; so much heroic, wasted labour has been expended on the dust and mud. Was it worth it?

Fraser Harrison will tell the story of the state and its troubled history.