Description:
Seduced by the government's offer of 320 acres per homesteader, Americans and Europeans rushed to Montana and the Dakotas to fulfill their own American dream in the first decade of the twentieth century.
Jonathan Raban's stunning evocation of the harrowing, desperate reality behind the homesteader's dreams strips away the myth--while preserving the romance--that has shrouded our understanding of our own heartland.
Brief description:
Jonathan Raban is the author of Soft City, Arabia, Old Glory, Foreign Land, For Love and Money, Coasting, and Hunting Mr. Heartbreak. He won the W. H. Heinemann Award for Literature in 1982 and the Thomas Cook Award in 1981 and 1991. He has also edited the Oxford Book of the Sea. He lives in Seattle.
Review Quotes:
"As good a book as I have read about rural America in a very long time...Reminds the reader how much America has always been nourished by the optimism of its immigrants."
-- "New York Times Book Review"