20 years ago or so, probably more I hate to say, I would frequently go into a bookshop, Waterstones or such, and after reading the synopsis, scoop up half a dozen novels of the latest fiction displayed near the entrance. In this way I discovered new writers and strangely many of them wrote works set in small town America. I don’t know what it was that attracted me to the these, maybe it was settings, maybe it was the ordinariness, the quirky characters, their foibles, eccentricities, failings, hopes, desires, relationships, mixed with a humanity and warmth. The story lines were often off centre away from the plodding narrative of many novels and often very funny.
Now, I find myself about to stay for over month in such a town, Red Cloud, Nebraska, population around 1100. The hometown of the Pulitzer prize winning novelist Willa Cather who was brought up there around the turn of the 20th century. In her time the population was about double, a pioneering settlement of hard striving migrants trying to cultivate the unyielding land. Those novels portray not only the protagonists, but also the community that builds up around such a settlement; railway, bank, loan company, teachers, school, lawyers, clerks, shops, churches, opera house. All the parts for an active soap. Many of Cather’s novels and stories are set in this place, with a different name, and many of the characters based on the inhabitants of her time.
I made a quick two day visit there last year. Much of the town has not changed, still with its original buildings and restored houses of her family and the families of the novels that are now part of a cultural tour. The second house her family moved into is now a splendid bed and breakfast. The roads around the farm land are still unmade and the land is of broad expanse of fields, finally tamed.
It is going to be interesting embedded into the community for that period and as an Englishman with a funny accent, I will have the opportunity, as one of life’s observers, to respectfully take in what I see and find out what real small town America is like.
Some of the writers I discovered and the books of whom remain my favourites:
Laurence Naumoff
Tom Drury
James Finney Boylan (now Jennifer) – The Planets
Geoff Ryman – Was
the earlier, shorter novels of Barbara Kingsolver