In What I Think I Did, Larry Woiwode does two things at once: he survives the winter of 1996, the worst in North Dakota's history, and tells the story of his beginnings as a writer, especially the early days at The New Yorker leading up to the publication of his first book, What I'm Going to Do, I Think."Act One" revolves around the purchase, installation, and feeding of a giant wood-burning furnace to heat Woiwode's farm through that winter's record snow and cold. These acts form a central metaphor for exploring the sources of his writer's craft and for pulling together the threads of...

In this deeply affecting memoir, Larry Woiwode addresses his son as heir to his emotional interior. With beautiful language and a poet's sensibility, Woiwode begins his story by relating a near-death experience with a malfunctioning hay baler--the kind of mistake that can kill a novice farmer. This episode launches a delicately woven series of memories, from snippets of Woiwode's days in New York as a young writer working with the late great William Maxwell, to his days as a young father, husband, and teacher trying to scrape enough together to buy a ranch in western North Dakota, and finally...