• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

k. lyn wurth, author great plains & western american fiction

find your place in a story

  • Author
  • Novels
  • Short Fiction
  • a place in history
  • Kind Words
  • Reading List
  • contact
  • Home
  • book trailers

Reading List

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

Great Plains Research

Great Plains Quarterly

Prairie Schooner

Western American Literature

Wicazo Sa Review

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

Great Plains Art Museum

Western Literature Association

Western Writers of America

Women Writing the West

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn

Copyright K. Lyn Wurth © 2021 · Log in