I invite readers to enter my view of the early 20th-Century Great Plains in my novels The Darkwater Liar’s Account and Seven Kinds of Rain: River Saga Book One (released July 1, 2016).
For those interested in exploring fiction of the Great Plains and American West, I offer my personal reading and resource list. It is not intended to be comprehensive, but rather a sampler of this diverse American fiction genre.
Fiction & Poetry
Edward Abbey Desert Solitaire
Jonis Agee Strange Angels
Bess Streeter Aldrich A Lantern in Her Hand
Sherman Alexie The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Ten Little Indians, Reservation Blues
Thomas Berger Little Big Man
Jon Billman When We Were Wolves
Frank Bergon The Temptations of St. Ed & Brother S., Wild Game
Willa Cather My Antonia, O Pioneers
Denise Chávez Face of an Angel
Walter van Tilburg Clark The Ox-Bow Incident
Sandra Cisneros Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories
Amanda Coplin The Orchardist
Elizabeth Crook The Night Journal
Sandra Dallas Tallgrass
Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers
Ivan Doig Ride With Me, Mariah Montana, This House of Sky
Debra Magpie Earling Perma Red
Louise Erdrich The Round House, Tales of Burning Love
Carlos Fuentes The Old Gringo
James Galvin The Meadow
Zane Grey Riders of the Purple Sage
Ron Hansen The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Jim Harrison Legends of the Fall
Kent Haruf Plainsong, Eventide, Benediction, Our Souls at Night
Tony Hillerman Coyote Waits
Philip Kimball Liar’s Moon: A Long Story
Tom King Green Grass, Running Water
Barbara Kingsolver Animal Dreams
Jane Kirkpatrick A Light in the Wilderness
Ted Kooser The Blizzard Voices, Weather Central (poems)
Herbert Krause Wind Without Rain
Robert Kroetsch Man from the Creeks
Rebecca Lawton Junction, Utah
Adrian C. Louis Skins, Wild Indians and Other Creatures
Norman Maclean A River Runs Through It
Frederick Manfred Lord Grizzly, The Golden Bowl
Demetria Martinez Mother Tongue
Cormac McCarthy No Country for Old Men, All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Blood Meridian
Larry McMurtry Lonesome Dove, The Last Picture Show
Wright Morris Plains Song: For Female Voices
Dan O’Brien Spirit of the Hills, The Indian Agent
Tillie Olsen Yonnondio
Janet Peery What the Thunder Said
Charles Portis True Grit
Laura Pritchett Stars Go Blue; Sky Bridge; Hell’s Bottom, Colorado
Annie Proulx Close Range
Ladette Randolph Haven’s Wake, A Sandhills Ballad, A Different Plain: Contemporary Nebraska Fiction Writers (ed)
Lucia St. Clair Robson Ride the Wind
Marilyn Robinson Housekeeping, Gilead
O.E. Rölvaag Giants in the Earth
Mary Doria Russell Doc
Mari Sandoz Old Jules
Leslie Marmon Silko Ceremony
Jane Smiley A Thousand Acres, The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton
Wallace Stegner Angle of Repose, Wolf Willow
John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath
Elinore Pruitt Stewart Letters of a Woman Homesteader
Douglas Unger Leaving the Land
Barbara Van Cleve Hard Twist: Western Ranch Women
Guy Vanderhaeghe The Englishman’s Boy
Alfredo Véa Jr. La Maravilla
Jeannette Walls Half Broke Horses
James Welch Winter in the Blood, Fools Crow
Julie Weston Moonshadows
John Williams Butcher’s Crossing
Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House on the Prairie
Dawn Wink Meadowlark
Owen Wister The Virginian
Nonfiction
Atlas of the Great Plains Stephen J. Lavin, J. Clark Archer, Fred Shelley, eds. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011.
Does the Frontier Experience Make America Exceptional? Richard W. Etulain Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 1999
Encyclopedia of the Great Plains David Wishart, ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004
The Nature of the Place: A Study of Great Plains Fiction Diane Dufva Quantic Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995
Literary and Scholarly Journals
Other Resources and Organizations
Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Lincoln, Nebraska
Center for Western Studies, Augustana University Sioux Falls, South Dakota