If you liked reading Michael Perry's experiences in small town America, you may like to try these fiction titles as well!
Close range: Wyoming stories / Annie Proulx.
New York, NY: Scribner, c1999.
Call Number: PS3566.R697 C58 1999
Annie Proulx’s masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in this collection of stories about loneliness, quick violence, and wrong kinds of love. In The Mud Below, a rodeo rider’s obsession marks the deepening fissures between his family life and self-imposed isolation. In The Half-Skinned Steer, an elderly fool drives west to the ranch he grew up on for his brother’s funeral, and dies a mile from home. In Brokeback Mountain, the difficult affair between two cowboys survives everything but the world’s violent intolerance. These are stories of desperation, hard times, and unlikely elation, set in a landscape both brutal and magnificent. Enlivened by folk tales, flights of fancy, and details of ranch and rural work, they juxtapose Wyoming’s traditional character and attitudes - confrontation of tough problems, prejudice, persistence in the face of difficulty - with the more benign values of the new west.--BOOK JACKET.
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Crow Lake / Mary Lawson.
New York: Bantam Dell, 2003.
Call Number: PR9199.4.L39 C76 2003
Lawson's novel is a family tale of orphaned children growing up in rural Ontario. Kate Morrison is only seven when her parents are killed in an automobile accident and her two older brothers, 17 and 19, work hard to keep the family together afterward. Told in a series of flashbacks, the Canadian outlands are an integral part of all the characters.
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Good-bye, Wisconsin by Glenway Wescott
Freeport NY: Books for Libraries Pr., c1970, 1928.
Call Number: PZ3.W512 Go 1970
Short stories by one of Wisconsin's notable early authors, Good-Bye Wisconsin gives the reader a sense of how the state was once a vast wilderness, its inhabitants struggling against both nature and poverty in communities far from one another. But Westcott's main focus is the resilience and sheer stubbornness of the human spirit in the face of lawlessness and injustice.
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Inheriting the land: contemporary voices from the Midwest
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, c1993.
Call Number: PS563.I54 1993
A large series of essays and recollections by notable writers of America's middle, including Robert Bly, Phil Dacey, Larry Woiwode, Meridel LeSeur, Dan O'Brien, Marcia Chamberlain and Stout's own Robert Schuler on living in a particular time and place. The stories include such eye-catching titles as Patricia Zontelli's "Bloodsuckers" and Stephen Dunning's "Gopher Hunting." Taken altogether, they provide an expansive view of rural living.
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Light in the crossing: stories / Kent Meyers.
New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.
Call Number: PS3563.E93 L54 1999
A dozen stories set in one small fictional town in South Dakota, Light in the Crossing defines all of the contradictions of country life in a metaphoric maze of life and death. Some of the lives in these tales are heavily symbolic, some are almost hyper-real. The characters struggle with love and loss, aspiration and bitterness and always the land watches over all.
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Lord of the barnyard: killing the fatted calf and arming the aware in the Corn Belt / Tristan Egolf.
New York: Grove Press, [1999], c1998.
Call Number: PS3555.G37 L67 1999
Lord of the Barnyard begins with the death of a woolly mammoth in the last Ice Age and concludes with a greased-pig chase at a funeral in the modern-day Midwest. In the interim there are two hydroelectric dam disasters, fourteen tavern brawls, one shoot-out in the hills, three cases of probable arson, a riot in the town hall, a lone tornado, a coven of Methodist crones, an encampment of Appalachian crop thieves, six renegade coal-truck operators, an outraged mob of factory rats, a dysfunctional poultry plant, and one autodidact goat-roping farm boy by the name of John Kaltenbrunner. Lord of the Barnyard is a comic tapestry of a Middle America populated by assembly-line drones and poultry-plant neckslicers, measuring into shot glasses the fruits of years of quiet desperation on the factory floor. It is a plea for nothing more than the minimal respect owed to the most forgotten blue-collar workers of the global proletariat, and a word of warning that respect denied can go much farther than postal. --BOOK JACKET
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What we lost / Dale Peck.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003.
Call Number: PS3566.E245 G74 2003
Dale Peck, Sr., grew up poor on rural Long Island in the 1950s, sharing a one-room house with seven brothers and sisters, an abusive mother, and an alcoholic father haunted by his past. When, at fourteen, Dale is more or less kidnapped by his father and taken to his uncle’s farm in upstate New York, the change wrought by the move is remarkable. Thriving on the farm, Dale develops a loving relationship with his uncle Wallace, and for the first time he knows contentment. But when Dale’s mother demands that he return, he is forced to choose between his broken family and the land and uncle he has come to love. It is a decision that will determine his future and the legacy he will pass on to his own son. --BOOK JACKET.
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Winter's bone: a novel / Daniel Woodrell.
New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2006.
Call Number: PS3573.O6263 W56 2006
Browsing Area, 4th Floor, University Library
The sheriff’s deputy at the front door tells Ree Dolly her father has skipped bail on charges he ran a meth lab, and the Dollys will lose their house if he doesn’t show up for his next court date. The Dolly clan has worked the shadowy side of the law for generations, and arrests (and attempts to avoid them) are part of life in Rathlin Valley. But the house is all they have, and Ree’s father would never forfeit it unless something awful happened. With two young brothers depending on her and a mother who’s entered a kind of second childhood, Ree knows she has to bring her father back, dead or alive, or else see her family turned out into the cold. Sixteen-year-old Ree, who has grown up in the harsh poverty of the Ozarks, learns quickly that asking questions of the Dolly clan can be a fatal mistake. She perseveres past obstacles of every kind and finally confronts the top figures in the family’s hierarchy. Along the way to a shocking revelation, Ree discovers unexpected depths in herself and in a family network that protects its own at any cost. --BOOK JACKET.
For more reading on rural life in America, try these nonfiction titles!
African American life in the rural South, 1900-1950.
Columbia: University of Missouri Press, c2003.
Call Number: E185.6 .A257 2003
African American Life in the Rural South, 1900-1950 provides important new information about African American culture, social life, and religion, as well as economics, federal policy, migration, and civil rights. The essays particularly emphasize the efforts of African Americans to negotiate the white world in the southern countryside. Filling a void in southern studies, this outstanding collection provides a substantive overview of the subject. --from Amazon.com
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Against all odds: rural community in the information age / John Conrad Allen.
Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994.
Call Number: HN79.W2 A43 1994
The authors’ model orients this community in the vortex of contemporary forces, pointing up, for example, the need for face-to-face interaction among residents versus the larger society’s demand for electronic communication. With increasing conflicts between the culture of rural communities and that of the “outside world” occurring, small towns all over the United States are losing their businesses, their doctors, and their sense of community. Yet the town described in this study is thriving. Against All Odds identifies pride, determination, and a sense of belonging that must be nurtured—and the local organization that binds all of these factors together—in order to keep a small town alive in the face of powerful disruptive forces. Not since Vidich and Bensman’s landmark Small Town in Mass Society has such a thoughtful examination of a contemporary rural community been available. --Book Description from Amazon.com
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The Aging in rural mid-America: a symposium on values for an evolving quality of life, June 5-6, 1978 / Conference: Work Conference on Aging (1978: Bethany College)
Lindsborg, Kan.: Bethany College, c1978.
Call Number: HQ1064.U5 W63 1978
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America the vanishing; rural life and the price of progress / Samuel R. Ogden.
Brattleboro, Vt., Stephen Greene Press, 1969.
Call Number:S942.O44
Ogden's book speaks of the price of progress paid by rural environments and the way of life all too often snuffed out by development.
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American picturesque / John Conron.
University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000.
Call Number: NX503.7 .C66 2000
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An American story / Debra J. Dickerson.
New York: Pantheon Books, c2000.
Call Number: PN4874.D435 A3 2000
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Back from the land: how young Americans went to nature in the 1970s, and why they came back / Eleanor Agnew.
Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2004.
Call Number: HT421 .A42 2004
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Biography of a small town / Elvin Hatch.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1979.
Call Number: HT123.5.C2 H37
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Call school: rural education in the Midwest to 1918 / Paul Theobald.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, c1995.
Call Number: LC5147.M55 T44 1995
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Children of the land: adversity and success in rural America / Glen H. Elder.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Call Number: HQ796 .E525 2000
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City people's guide to country living / Betsy Cobb.
New York, Macmillan [1973]
Call Number: S521.5.A2 C62
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Consumers in the country: technology and social change in rural America / Ronald R. Kline.
Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, c2000.
Call Number: T14.5 .K578 2000
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Country schoolwomen: teaching in rural California, 1850-1950 / Kathleen Weiler.
Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, c1998.
Call Number: LB2837 .W445 1998
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Days on the family farm: from the Golden Age through the Great Depression / Carrie A. Meyer.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, c2007.
Call Number: S521.5.I3 M49 2007
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Encyclopedia of rural America: the land and people.
Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, c1997.
Call Number: E169.12 .E5 1997
Location: Reference Stacks (1st Floor)
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Endangered spaces, enduring places: change, identity, and survival in rural America / Janet M. Fitchen.
Boulder: Westview Press, 1991.
Call Number: HN79.N4 F58 1991
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The Face of rural America
Washington: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture: for sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. Govt. Print. Office, 1976.
Call Number: S441.F33x 1976
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Farm boys: lives of gay men from the rural Midwest .
Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, c1998.
Call Number: HQ76.2.U52 F44 1998
Homosexuality is often seen as a purely urban experience, far removed from rural and small-town life. Farm Boys undermines that cliche by telling the stories of more than three dozen gay men, ranging in age from 24 to 84, who grew up in farm families in the midwestern United States. These men speak of the ways their farm upbringings influenced the course and character of their lives, especially with regard to gender identity and sexual orientation. Whether painful, funny, or matter-of-fact, their plain-spoken accounts will move and educate any reader, gay or not, from farm or city.
--BOOK JACKET.
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Farm children; an investigation of rural child life in selected areas of Iowa / Bird Thomas Baldwin.
New York, Arno Press, 1972 [c1930]
Call Number: HN79.I8 B34 1972
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Farm women on the prairie frontier: a sourcebook for Canada and the United States / Carol Fairbanks.
Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1983.
Call Number: HQ1438.A17 F34 1983
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Grass roots: the universe of home / Paul Gruchow.
Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions ; [Emeryville, Calif.]: Distributed by Publishers Group West, 1995.
Call Number: S521.5.M6 G78 1995
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An hour before daylight: memories of a rural boyhood / Jimmy Carter.
New York: Simon & Schuster, c2001.
Call Number: E873 .C36 2001
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Letters from the country / Carol Bly.
New York: Harper & Row, c1981.
Call Number: F614.M14 B58 1981
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Miracles of the spirit: folk, art, and stories from Wisconsin / Don Krug.
Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2005.
Call Number: N6530.W6 K78 2005
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Nellie Kedzie Jones's advice to farm women: letters from Wisconsin, 1912-1916 / Nellie Kedzie Sawyer Jones.
[Madison, Wis.]: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1973.
Call Number: VF 28
Area Research Center Vertical File Collection
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Our forgotten past: seven centuries of life on the land
New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson, 1982.
Call Number: HT415 .O93 1982b
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Prairie patrimony: family, farming, and community in the Midwest / Sonya Salamon.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, c1992.
Call Number: HQ536.15.A14 S25 1992
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Prairie women: images in American and Canadian fiction / Carol Fairbanks.
New Haven: Yale University Press, c1986.
Call Number: PS273 .F34 1986
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Rural America, edited by Suzanne Fremon, and Morrow Wilson.
New York: H.W. Wilson Co., 1976.
Call Number: HN57.R78x
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Rural Maine by Mark Silber.
[Boston] D. R. Godine [c1972]
Call Number: F26.S54
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Rural youth: their situation and prospects / Bruce Lee Melvin.
Washington, U.S.Govt.Print.Off., 1938.
Call Number: HV 85.A36 No.15
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Sprawl: a compact history / Robert Bruegmann.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, c2005.
Call Number: HT371 .B74 2005
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There goes the neighborhood: rural school consolidation at the grass roots in early twentieth-century Iowa / David R. Reynolds.
Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, c1999.
Call Number: LB2861 .R49 1999
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Wisconsin folklore edited by James P. Leary.
Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, c1998.
Call Number: GR110.W5 L43 1998
Tales from lumberjacks, farmers, gospel singers, Ojibwe, Manitowac, Swiss, Finn and Swede, about nearly everything in the state including forests, farms, boats, fishing (and spearing), faith, magic, music, tavern amusements and the St. James pork hocks and sauerkraut supper. A compendium of what it means to live in Wisconsin.
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Wisconsin land and life.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, c1997.
Call Number: F581.8 .W57 1997
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Wisconsin's agricultural heritage. The Grange, 1871-1971 / LaVerne H. Marquart.
[Lake Mills, Wis., Printed by Rural Life Pub. Co., 1972]
Call Number: HD1485.P5 M3x
Area Research Center LC Book Collection, 3rd floor
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Writings of farm women, 1840-1940: an anthology.
New York: Garland, 1990.
Call Number: HQ1410 .W75 1990
Homefront / Doris Gwaltney.
New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, c2006.
Call Number: PZ7.G9893 Hom 2006
Educational Material Center Young Adult Coll. (1st Floor)
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A long way from Chicago: a novel in stories / Richard Peck.
New York, N.Y.: Puffin Books, 2000, c1998.
Call Number: PZ7.P338 Lo 2000
Educational Material Center Young Adult Coll. (1st Floor)
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A year down yonder / Richard Peck.
New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 2000.
Call Number: PZ7.P338 Yh 2000
Educational Material Center Young Adult Coll. (1st Floor)
Country boys [videorecording]
Alexandria, VA: PBS Home Video, [2006]
Call Number: HQ799.K46 C68 2006
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A Day in the life of the one-room school [videorecording]
[DeKalb, Ill.]: Northern Illinois University, c1987.
Call Number: LB1567 .D39x
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The pioneer Wisconsin farmwife [videorecording]
Traverse City, MI: Upper Midwest Video, 199?
Call Number: HQ1438.W6 P56x Educational Materials Center Juvenile Collection (1st Floor)