Home on the Range

Book excerpt: Home on the Range chronicles the epic drama of the settling and development of the High Plains, as viewed through the saga of journalist James Dickenson's family and the wheat-farming community of McDonald, Kansas. With a reporter's sharp eye for detail and human drama, as well as a lucid understanding of the grand sweep of history, Dickenson paints a highly personal portrait of American rural life and its tenacious struggle to survive. By turns lyrical, nostalgic, and unflinchingly realistic, Dickenson weaves a fascinating narrative in which shootouts, lynchings, human chicanery, and nature's treachery test the community's unswerving faith in hard work, tradition, and themselves.