The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

By the time she turned sixteen, there was little that Laurie Novak had not learned about survival. The many life and death lessons that a girl needs to know growing up in South Dakota were told to her by her father. The short, clustered buildings of her medium-sized hometown offered only a little protection from the dangerous weather of the prairie, and Laurie was barely walking when he first started talking about how to not be killed by its extreme weather.