Plains Folk

It seems I had to travel to Winnipeg to discover, in the inventory of a favorite bookstore, that there is a new biography of Larry McMurtry, our late great American novelist, written by a chap named Tracy Daugherty. This life is an absorbing read for me, but not always a comfortable one, as so much of the narrative knife cuts to the bone.

In March of 1901, the country correspondent at Bloomenfield informed the readers of the Jamestown Weekly Alert about the recent local movements of the horse trader, Herman Cook, from Windsor. “Think the charming young lady at Mr. K’s has something to do with it,” was the report. “How is it, Herman?”

Fisherman’s Dream is the most wonderful of all the roadside installations on the Enchanted Highway. In his new book--or manifesto, or memoir, or really it’s an extended essay--Clay Jenkinson declares, “I am wild about Fisherman’s Dream.” This particular Gary Greff creation drips with irony, while at the same time appealing to the basal fisherman, so that you come away affirmed but also feeling like there are some things you may not have apprehended.

“Jerry Kelland started on his contract at the fire hall this week,” says the Langdon Courier Democrat of 18 January 1894. “He will put in a brick cistern of 1,000 barrels capacity. Dynamite was used in breaking up the frozen earth.”

This new book by David Treuer, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, is long, winding, and sometimes exasperating. I was making my way through its treatment of…

I don’t know whether it is on account of the nostalgia that oozes from that stanza, or because of my delight in the discovery of a new-to-me prairie…

Professor Tom Isern is a distinguished professor at North Dakota State University for a reason -- he really cares about the people of the plains, wants to…

The complex of beds and borders and compost piles between our house and Willow Creek is, officially, a place, which we call, simply, the Prairie Garden.…

There you have the news from Oberon, Guelph, Sheyenne, and Pleasant Prairie, respectively. Brought to you by the country correspondents of those rural…

Two things stand out in the chorus from 1916 I just sang. First, the tune is familiar. It’s “Marching through Georgia,” a triumphal battle anthem from…