A Daughter of the Middle Border.

Hamlin Garland wrote about the American prairie with the unsentimental affection of someone who had both loved and fled it, and this celebrated memoir gathers that feeling into one of the finest personal accounts of Midwestern life.

What it's about

A sequel to his earlier A Son of the Middle Border, this volume continues Garland's account of his own life and that of his family across the farming country of the upper Midwest. It follows his growth as a writer, his marriage, the care of aging parents, and the slow settling of a restless man who had spent years torn between the pull of the land and the ambitions of the wider literary world. The book won the Pulitzer Prize, and its strength lies in the tenderness and honesty with which Garland records ordinary domestic life against the vast backdrop of the plains.

Themes

Family duty, the passage of generations, and the tension between rootedness and ambition run throughout. Garland is deeply attentive to the labour and hardship of frontier farming, and to the women whose endurance held households together. The memoir is also about coming home, about reconciling the person one has become with the place one came from.

Why it still matters

As a firsthand record of American settlement and its human cost, the book remains a valuable and moving document. Garland helped pioneer a realistic literature of the Midwest, and his refusal to romanticise farm life gives his affection for it all the more weight.

Who it's for

Readers who love American memoir, regional writing, and family history will find much to savour, as will anyone drawn to the literature of the frontier and the quiet drama of ordinary lives well remembered.

Sources and references

Verified references for this edition: Open Library, WorldCat, Hamlin Garland on Wikipedia.