It's Christmas, and Carol Dickens's life is in major transition. Her son Finn, a talented trumpet player, is about to leave for college. Her ex-husband, a real-estate wheeler-dealer, wants to sell their properties in Kansas and move to Arizona. Her wheelchair-bound friend, Laurence, has fallen in love with her. To top it all off, Scraps, the family dog, is dying. As her world spins out of control, Carol seeks refuge in her research on the use of the semicolon--and in her ritual of cooking the perfect series of Victorian holiday meals inspired by A Christmas Carol.

"To understand why people say 'Dear old Kansas " is to understand that Kansas is no mere geographical expression, but a 'state of mind, ' a religion, and a philosophy in one," writes historian Carl Becker in the classic 1910 essay that leads off this volume. Like Becker, the twelve other essayists and four poets try to map the spiritual topography of Kansas and explain why this particular patch of prairie is so dear. They share the conviction that Kansas represents something powerful, something significant, something noteworthy. The seventeen selections are put into perspective by Thomas Fox Averill's headnotes and introductory essay, which makes its own contribution to our understanding of Kansas. The essays and poems (all previously published except for the last essay) are arranged chronologically, from the earliest (1910) to the most recent (1990). Illustrated with woodcuts from the Prairie Print-makers.

The Midwest has produced a robust literary heritage. Its authors have won half of the nation's Nobel Prizes for Literature plus a significant number of Pulitzer Prizes. This volume explores the rich racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the region. It also contains entries on 35 pivotal Midwestern literary works, literary genres, literary, cultural, historical, and social movements, state and city literatures, literary journals and magazines, as well as entries on science fiction, film, comic strips, graphic novels, and environmental writing. Prepared by a team of scholars, this second volume of the Dictionary of Midwestern Literature is a comprehensive resource that demonstrates the Midwest's continuing cultural vitality and the stature and distinctiveness of its literature.

Not just epistolary, this novel is archival, told entirely through journals, letters, photos, drawings, notes, and clippings left behind by Nell Doerr, who lived in Lawrence, Kansas, between 1854 and 1889. Although Nell seems so real you can reach out and touch her, she is a fictional character. The novel tells the story of her two stillborn babies, her move to Kansas, the loss of her husband in Quantrill's Raid, and her discovery, while hiding in her basement, of the fossils of ancient creatures in the foundation rock. In finding these specimens this unforgettable heroine finds herself, a woman unconventional and strong, a mother without children, a wife without a husband, a scientist without educational pedigree, but someone who nurtures her passion for nature and contributes to the scientific knowledge of her time.

Raised in the traditional kitchen from which his mother runs her Buen AppeTito catering service, Weston Tito Hingler's childhood is shaped by the foods he eats, especially those he must try before he is allowed to enter the Tsil Cafe where his father invites--and at times challenges--diners to experience foods of the New World cooked New Mexican style. Filled with recipes and definitions of New World ingredients, Averill's novel follows Wes as he navigates his way through the duelling cuisines of his passionate parents and the signature recipes of his life.

When Thomas Fox Averill first heard Jimmy Driftwood's ballad ""Tennessee Stud,"" he found the song hauntingly compelling. As he began to imagine the story behind the lyrics, he set out to research the song's history--a tale from ""along about eighteen and twenty-five"" of the legendary exploits of the greatest horse that ever lived, the ""Tennessee Stud,"" and his owner. Traveling the same route the song chronicles, from Tennessee into Arkansas, through Texas and into Mexico, Averill visited racetracks, Spanish missions, historical museums, a living history farm, and national parks, inventing characters of his own along the way. His novel captures the spirit of the ballad while telling the story of Robert Johnson, a man who holds love in his heart though adventure rules his time. Pursued by a bounty hunter, Indians, and his conscience, Johnson and his horse are tested, strengthened, and made resolute. ""Both an odyssey and a great love story, rode is made compelling by its thoughtful hero and the surprising woman he longs for. Precise language and authentic detail render a vivid sense of another time, and Averill's Southern landscape, so beautifully drawn, is peopled with unforgettable men and women."" --Laura Moriarty, author of The Center of Everything. ""No one drives a narrative better than Thomas Fox Averill, and this novel version of a grand American tale shows Tom Averill's skills at their best. rode performs not only through action but the perfect articulation of 19th Century Arkansas and Tennessee. Averill knows the lingo, blunt, uncompromising, and accurate, from saddle trees to foals, and even to a dauncy mare, a wonderful allusion to the author's Scottish heritage and ours. This is complicated evocation of character, yes, in Robert Johnson, Jo Benson, and others; but even more, Thomas Averill's narrative rides evocative language like a great stud horse.""--Robert Stewart, author of Outside Language: Essays, editor, New Letters magazine

Falling under the spell of these short stories by O. Henry Award-winning author Thomas Fox Averill, a reader might well wonder: What in the world is ordinary? If there really are "just plain folks" anywhere at all, they'd surely be in the solid Midwestern Kansas of Averill's fiction. And yet the "ordinary" people we meet in these stories lead us into one startling encounter after another with the mystery, the magic, and, yes, the transcendence that even the most mundane life secretly holds. In writing that has been called "lyrical" ("New York Times"), "compelling" ("Kansas City Star"), and "voluptuous" ("Booklist"), Averill explores the relationship between fathers and sons, the dead and the living, the natural and the unnatural. With crystalline clarity he reveals the ordinary and the extraordinary genius of a place, a time, a solitary soul embedded in the minutiae of the everyday: a young boy hunting for a runaway horse; a couple ostracized in their small town; a grieving high school basketball star; a child with a voice purer than a tuning fork; a gay son seeking his father's acceptance; two boys playing bocce with the parish priest for high stakes--the secret of their birth. If there is magic in love, in acceptance, in sorrow and solace in all the usual places, then these stories find that magic with ordinary genius.

When Thomas Fox Averill first heard Jimmy Driftwood's ballad "Tennessee Stud," he found the song hauntingly compelling. As he began to imagine the story behind the lyrics, he set out to research the song's history-a tale from "along about eighteen and twenty-five"" of the legendary exploits of the greatest horse that ever lived, the "Tennessee Stud," and his owner.

Traveling the same route the song chronicles, from Tennessee into Arkansas, through Texas and into Mexico, Averill visited racetracks, Spanish missions, historical museums, a living history farm, and national parks, inventing characters of his own along the way. His novel captures the spirit of the ballad while telling the story of Robert Johnson, a man who holds love in his heart though adventure rules his time. Pursued by a bounty hunter, Indians, and his conscience, Johnson and his horse are tested, strengthened, and made resolute.