Mildred Walker (1905-1998) wrote a series of books considered Western regional, and was compared to Willa Cather. Walker, however, has a sensibility all her own, and Winter Wheat (1944) was a book that impressed me from the first page. In it, people are tied to the land and the wheat it produces.
It begins in an office by the storage silo in Gotham, a village of 75 that hardly lives up to its pretentious name. (more…)