The Nature of the Place

"Persuasive and engaging...For those interested in understanding how the literature of a region both enacts and undermines its mythical past, Diane Quantic's book is the place to begin." - "Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature". "This interesting and accessible book focuses on a broad range of mythic Great Plains images and how they codified powerful emotions and social attitudes...Richly suggestive." - "Choice". "All students of the Great Plains should welcome this. Literary scholars will find [it] most useful, but so should cultural geographers as well as environmental and agricultural historians." - "Kansas History". The Great Plains has long been fertile ground for literature. "The Nature of the Place" is a comprehensive study of novels and stories by such Plains writers as Willa Cather, Wright Morris, Mari Sandoz, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Frederick Manfred, Wallace Stegner, and Bess Streeter Aldrich. Throughout, Diane Dufva Quantic is aware of the region's collective social and cultural history - aware of the immensely fruitful clash between that complex history and Plains myth (such as "Garden of the World" and "Great American Desert").
In the vast and changeable Great Plains, as Wright Morris once remarked, "Many things would come to pass, but the nature of the place would remain a matter of opinion." Diane Dufva Quantic is an associate professor of English and director of the writing program at Wichita State University.