Download or read book Driftless written by David Rhodes and published by Milkweed Editions. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A fast-moving story about small town life with characters that seem to have walked off the pages of Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology.”—The Wall Street Journal The few hundred souls who inhabit Words, Wisconsin, are an extraordinary cast of characters. The middle-aged couple who zealously guards their farm from a scheming milk cooperative. The lifelong invalid, crippled by conflicting emotions about her sister. A cantankerous retiree, haunted by childhood memories after discovering a cougar in his haymow. The former drifter who forever alters the ties that bind a community. In his first novel in 30 years, David Rhodes offers a vivid and unforgettable look at life in small-town America. “[Rhodes’s] finest work yet . . . Driftless is the best work of fiction to come out of the Midwest in many years.”—Chicago Tribune “Set in a rural Wisconsin town, the book presents a series of portraits that resemble Edgar Lee Masters’s ‘Spoon River Anthology’ in their vividness and in the cumulative picture they create of village life.”—The New Yorker “Encompassing and incisive, comedic and profound, Driftless is a radiant novel of community and courage.”—Booklist (starred review) “A welcome antidote to overheated urban fiction . . . A quiet novel of depth and simplicity.”—Kirkus Reviews “It takes a while for all these stories to kick in, but once they do, Rhodes shows he still knows how to keep readers riveted. Add a blizzard, a marauding cougar and some rabble-rousing militiamen, and the result is a novel that is as affecting as it is pleasantly overstuffed.”—Publishers Weekly

Download or read book Driftless Stories written by John Motoviloff and published by Big Earth Publishing. This book was released on 2001 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Southwest Wisconsin, the rugged area untouched by the last glaciers, is a gem of exquisite beauty and unique natural features. In these lyrical essays, John Motoviloff explores the region as a hunter and fisherman, breaking down the traditional barriers between hunting and environmentalism, between poetry and prose.

Download or read book Driftless written by and published by . This book was released on 2018-09 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Driftless written by Danny Wilcox Frazier and published by Center for Documentary Studies. This book was released on 2007 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the third biennial Center for Documentary Studies/Honickman First Book Prize Robert Frank, Prize Judge In Driftless, Danny Wilcox Frazier's dramatic black-and-white photographs portray a changing Midwest of vanishing towns and transformed landscapes. As rural economies fail, people, resources, and services are migrating to the coasts and cities, as though the heart of America were being emptied. Frazier's arresting photographs take us into Iowa's abandoned places and illuminate the lives of those people who stay behind and continue to live there: young people at leisure, fishermen on the Mississippi, veterans on Memorial Day, Amish women playing cards, as well as more recent arrivals: Lubavitcher Hasidic Jews at prayer, Latinos at work in the fields. Frazier's camera finds these newcomers while it also captures activities that seemingly have gone on forever: harvesting and hunting, celebrating and socializing, praying and surviving. This collection of photographs is a portrait of contemporary rural Iowa, but it is also more that that. It shows what is happening in many rural and out-of-the-way communities all over the United States, where people find ways to get by in the wake of closing factories and the demise of family farms. Taken by a true insider who has lived in Iowa his entire life, Frazier's photographs are rich in emotion and give expression to the hopes and desires of the people who remain, whose needs and wants are complicated by the economic realities remaking rural America. Poetic and dark but illuminated with flashes of insight, Frazier's stunning images evoke the brilliance of Robert Frank's The Americans. To view an image gallery, click here.

Download or read book Chasing the Light written by Mark Allister and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2014-10-15 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Cloud Cult’s grand, unkempt indie rock is at once jam band, emo, and avant-garde. Their songs, born out of personal tragedy, are otherworldly lessons in being human.” —Pitchfork During the past decade, Minnesota-grown band Cloud Cult has become one of the most inspirational indie bands, with a deeply devoted fan base and an approach to music and the environment that is hard not to admire. Beyond a musical biography, Chasing the Light tells the story of the heartbreaking yet affirming journey of lead singer and songwriter Craig Minowa and delves into the career of the band known by music lovers as the least cynical and most idealistic band in the country. Tracing Cloud Cult’s rise to critical acclaim, author Mark Allister details the band’s defining moments, beginning with the death of Craig and Connie Minowa’s two-year-old son and the hundreds of songs that grew out of the tragic loss. Allister describes the band’s unique philosophy and principles, including how Minowa created a zero carbon footprint for the band’s recording and touring, adopting DIY and green-sustainable practices well before the ideas became mainstream. Allister also presents a first-person account of a day in the life of a quintessential indie band and conveys the immense emotional impact of Cloud Cult’s albums and live shows. Described by a fan in the book as “the anthem for the soul searcher in us all,” Cloud Cult’s music and message are both stirring and sincere. Featuring rarely seen photos from Cloud Cult’s history and passionate testimonials by fans, Chasing the Light is a testament to the profound influence one band’s personal evolution can have on its followers and on indie rock aficionados in search of beauty, meaning, and redemption.

Download or read book The Driftless Area written by Tom Drury and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2012-11-27 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the award-winning author of The End of Vandalism. “Equal parts heist caper, ghost story and romance . . . in prose that is spare and sly.” (The New York Times) Set in the rugged region of the Midwest that gives the novel its title, The Driftless Area is the story of Pierre Hunter, a young bartender with unfailing optimism, a fondness for coin tricks, and an uncanny capacity for finding trouble. When he falls in love, with the mysterious and isolated Stella Rosmarin, Pierre becomes the central player in a revenge drama he must unravel and bring to its shocking conclusion. Along the way he will liberate $77,000 from a murderous thief, summon the resources that have eluded him all his life, and come to question the very meaning of chance and mortality. For nothing is as it seems in The Driftless Area. Identities shift, violent secrets lie in wait, the future can cause the past, and love becomes a mission that can take you beyond this world. In its tender, cool irony, The Driftless Area recalls the best of neonoir, and its cast of bona fide small-town eccentrics adrift in the American Midwest make for a clever and deeply pleasurable read from one of our most beloved authors. “Drury is nothing less than a wizard . . . Not since Twin Peaks has he rural surreal had such an artful airing.” —The Boston Globe “Superb . . . by one of America’s finest, most imaginative authors.” —San Francisco Chronicle “With deceptively simple prose, Drury is able to evoke characters and scenes in just a few brush strokes.” —Los Angeles Times

Download or read book The Driftless Reader written by Curt Meine and published by Emerald Group Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The enchanting, enigmatic Driftless Area of the Upper Midwest is anthologized here with readings and illustrations from the region's Native people, explorers, scientists, historians, farmers, journalists, poets, and artists, including Black Hawk, Mark Twain, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Frank Lloyd Wright, Aldo Leopold, August Derleth, and David Rhodes.

Download or read book Driftless Spirits written by Dennis Boyer and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a superb collection of ghost tales from the hills of Wisconsin's driftless region, the southwest area untouched by the last of the glaciers. The region has a rich legacy of folktales, passed down from generation to generation, that are sure to entertain.

Download or read book The Physical Geography and Geology of the Driftless Area written by Eric C. Carson and published by Geological Society of America. This book was released on 2019-11-04 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Over the course of his 43-year career, James C. Knox conducted seminal research on the geomorphology of the Driftless Area of southwestern Wisconsin. His research covered wide-ranging topics such as long-term land-scape evolution in the Driftless Area; responses of floods to climate change since the last glaciation; processes and timing of floodplain sediment deposition on both small streams and on the Mississippi River; impacts of European settlement on the landscape; and responses of stream systems to land-use changes. This volume presents the state of knowledge of the physical geography and geology of this unglaciated region in the otherwise-glaciated Midwest with contributions written by Knox prior to his passing in 2012 and by a number of his former colleagues and graduate students"--

Download or read book Crossing the Driftless written by Lynne Diebel and published by University of Wisconsin Pres. This book was released on 2015-03-24 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both a traveler's tale of a 359-mile canoe trip and an exploration of the dramatic environment of the Upper Midwest's Driftless region, following the streams of geologic and human history.

Download or read book The Driftless Land written by Kevin Koch and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Driftless Land, a collection of essays by Kevin Koch, is a search for the spirit of place among the bluffs, woodlands, and prairies of the Upper Mississippi River valley. The Midwest is commonly known for its flatlands, for oceans of corn pressing towards the horizon beneath a big sky. Lesser known are the steep hills and bluffs, the ravines and towering rock outcroppings where the upper Mississippi carves its meandering path. These rugged lands amid the prairies are known as The Driftless Area, a 20,000 square-mile region of northeast Iowa, northwest Illinois, southeast Minnesota, and southwest and central Wisconsin, bypassed by most of the glaciers. Koch observes, "You can 'love nature' and 'love the land'--but you won't know place until you've walked slowly and attentively through Lost Canyon or the Kickapoo Valley Reserve or Swiss Valley or Trempealeau Mountain, and then returned to learn what you can about them." Hidden within the woodlands are the imprints of human history and the deeper geological story as well, the story of a land untouched by the ancient onslaught of leveling glaciers. The result is a call to know place deeply, whatever place you inhabit.

Download or read book Driftless Gold written by Sue Berg and published by . This book was released on 2021-04-15 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A migrant worker is discovered buried in a local quarry with an antique gold coin in his pocket near La Crosse, Wisconsin. Lt. Jim Higgins begins to unravel a murder that will take him back into Wisconsin's early history. During the investigation, Higgins meets a local archaeological savant and treasure hunter who tells him a wild tale about a U.S. Army payroll that was stolen on the way to Fort Crawford in Prairie du Chien in 1866. The payroll has never been recovered. Is the coin on the dead man part of the stolen treasure? Higgins hesitates to base his investigation on a wild tale, but he has nothing else to go on. As his team desperately attempts to make sense of the facts, the killer strikes again. The investigative team realizes the wild tale may be the only explanation for the two murders. In a race against time, Jim struggles to identify the killer-and find the elusive gold treasure.

Download or read book Crowbar Governor written by Kevin Murphy and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While president of Aetna Life from 1879 to 1922, Morgan Bulkeley served four terms as mayor of Hartford, two terms as Connecticut’s governor, and one term as a United States senator. His friends and business and political acquaintances were a who’s who of the Gilded Age: Samuel Clemens, J. P. Morgan, Samuel and Elizabeth Colt, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker, Albert Spalding, General Sherman, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Katherine Hepburn, as well as every president from Ulysses Grant to Warren Harding. In 1874 Bulkeley formed the Hartford Dark Blues who soon joined the unruly National Association, antecedent of the National League. He served as the league’s first president for a year, and was later elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. It was during Bulkeley’s controversial “holdover” term as governor that he earned the nickname “Crowbar Governor.” He used a crowbar to remove a lock that had been placed on his office door after refusing to vacate the governor’s chambers on a technicality. Written in classic storyteller fashion, and augmented by copious research, Crowbar Governor offers readers a privileged glimpse into life and politics in Connecticut during the Gilded Age. Ebook Edition Note: Eight images from the Connecticut Historical Society have been redacted.

Download or read book Ridge Stories written by Gary Jones and published by Wisconsin Historical Society Press. This book was released on 2019-11-07 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Straight talk from up on the farm Raised on a small dairy farm in the Driftless Area in the mid-twentieth century, Gary Jones gets real about his rural roots. In this collection of interrelated stories, Jones writes with plainspoken warmth and irreverence about farm, family, and folks on the ridge. Readers will meet Gramp Jones, whose oversized overalls saved him from losing a chunk of flesh to an irate sow; the young one-room-school teacher who helped the kids make sled jumps at recess; Charlotte, the lawn-mowing sheep who once ended up in the living room; Victor the pig-cutter, who learned his trade from folk tradition rather than vet school; and other colorful characters of the ridge. Often humorous and occasionally touching, Jones’s essays paint a vivid picture that will entertain city and country folk alike.

Download or read book Connecticut in the American Civil War written by Matthew Warshauer and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2014-08-01 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Serves as a model of what a state-level survey of the Civil War can achieve . . . a potent combination of description and analysis.” —The Civil War Monitor Connecticut in the American Civil War offers a remarkable window into the state’s involvement in a conflict that challenged and defined the unity of a nation. The arc of the war is traced through the many facets and stories of battlefield, home front, and factory. Matthew Warshauer masterfully reveals the varied attitudes toward slavery and race before, during, and after the war; Connecticut’s reaction to the firing on Fort Sumter; the dissent in the state over whether or not the sword and musket should be raised against the South; the raising of troops; the sacrifice of those who served on the front and at home; and the need for closure after the war. This book is a concise, amazing account of a complex and troubling war. No one interested in this period of American history can afford to miss reading this important contribution to our national and local stories.

Download or read book Going Driftless written by Stephen J. Lyons and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-05-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Going Driftless is a book that explores a whole world within a world in the upper Midwest and looks at the nostalgia of small towns and local living (eating, shopping, etc.)—and asks how does it work what lessons can we learn from it.

Download or read book New Haven s Sentinels written by Jelle Zeilinga de Boer and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-21 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: West Rock and East Rock are bold and beautiful features around New Haven, Connecticut. They resemble monumental gateways (or time-tried sentinels) and represent a moment in geologic time when the North American and African continents began to separate and volcanism affected much of Connecticut. The rocks attracted the attention of poets, painters, and naturalists when beliefs rose about the spiritual dimensions of nature in the early 19th century. More than two dozen artists, including Frederick Church, George Durrie, and John Weir, captured their magic and produced an assortment of classic American landscapes. In the same period, the science of geology evolved rapidly, triggered by the controversy between proponents and opponents of biblical explanations for the origin of rocks. Lavishly illustrated, featuring over sixty paintings and prints, this book is a perfect introduction to understanding the relationship of geology and art. It will delight those who appreciate landscape painting, and anyone who has seen the grandeur of East and West Rock.