San Antonio College Library

Suckow is sometimes recalled as a "regionalist," but she did not consider herself such a writer. She said that she wrote about "people, situations, and their meaning." Her fiction was often set in Iowa, but was not parochial in outlook. Today her writing has value for readers who enjoy good storytelling as well as for social historians looking for details about life in the early 20th century, particularly in the small towns of Iowa.o.

Referring to the Midwest and West as the "new ground," the author argues they should be incorporated into the American literature canon alongside the East. His thesis is that the land-based economies of the Great Plains have produced an American literature of openness and freedom, whereas the commercial economies of the East and South have continued a literature of enclosure imported from Europe. Bredahl's analysis of authors and works is very useful,...

"Drawing on recent studies in cultural geography, environmental history, and mythology, as well as literary criticism, The Midwestern Pastoral: Place and Landscape in Literature of the American Heartland relates Midwestern pastoral writers to their local geographies and explains their approaches. William Barillas treats five important Midwestern pastoralists - Willa Cather, Aldo Leopold, Theodore Roethke, James Wright, and Jim Harrison - in separate...