A Son of the Middle Border is not just Hamlin Garland’s autobiography, it is, as he says, “the chronicle of an era.” Willa Cather’s My Ántonia and O Pioneers! tell the story of immigrant settlers on the great western plains. The tale Garland tells is of easterners moving forever westward in search of better opportunities. It is a tale told elsewhere by Laura Ingalls Wilder. When the Dust Bowl hit, many of these families moved westward again, this time to California, in a journey chronicled by John Steinbeck and the FSA and Resettlement Administration photographers. Garland’s vivid descriptions of both land and resident capture a moment in time that was, even as he wrote this volume, disappearing quickly into the past.A Son of the Middle Border
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