Like many young North Dakotans, Sarah Vogel left her very rural home state in 1967 in search of new opportunities and the excitement of life in the big city. As Vogel points out, the “rather sad joke” was true: “North Dakota's greatest export was its young people” (19). And like a substantial portion of those human exports, after a few years of pursuing her dreams and climbing career ladders Vogel found herself returning to the Northern Plains, joining the family business, and even (briefly) moving into her parents' basement.
But if most North Dakotans' family business was farming, the Vogel family business was fighting for farmers legally and politically. Sarah's grandfather, Frank A. Vogel, was a state tax commissioner, manager of the state-owned Bank of North Dakota (created in 1919 to increase access to credit in order to promote agriculture and commerce in the state), and chief political adviser to...
