Zane Grey’s wilderness adventures are recounted in his several books about fishing. My dad, an avid fisherman, had a first edition of his 1928 stories, Tales of Freshwater Fishing, principally conducted on the wild rivers of Oregon. His writing style is intense, vivid and exciting, as he relates his encounters …
In her 1952 work Giant, Edna Ferber chose the novel form rather than a long, boring trilogy, she says, to help us understand Texas. She presents an intimate and sweeping panorama of this sprawling state–its past, its more recent development and its future. In an era when politics has become …
When she illustrates history’s personal costs, Barbara Kingsolver, in her 2007 historical novel The Lacuna, makes history come. alive. She tackles Mexico’s culture from the sixteenth century Aztecs’ battles with Montezuma to the exile of L. D. Trotsky in Mexico during the 1930s and beyond, into twentieth century North American …
Good fiction, as well as a good motion picture, depends upon strong characters. The poignant story of a foundling eventually adopted by a miller’s wife, François le Champi , 1852 (literally François the Foundling), by the versatile and prolific author and one-time mistress of Chopin, George Sand, exhibits deep and …
It took him until 1984 but Studs Terkel, the noted Chicago columnist and radio commentator, gathered hundreds of interviews and organized them into a single volume, entitled, “The Good War:” An Oral History of World War II. As I read page after page of heartfelt testimony by eyewitnesses from all …
This novel, set in Bentrock, concerns this small Montana town’s terrible secret. David, an insightful 12-year-old, narrates the story of his father, Sheriff Wesley Hayden, his mother Gail, their Sioux Indian housekeeper Marie and his uncle Frank, a war hero and one of only two town doctors. He tells the …
s In Amor Towles’s magical epic, The Lincoln Highway, set in the early 1950s in the Midwest, Emmett Watson becomes the epic hero. Long since abandoned by his mother and recently orphaned by the death of his father, he returns in the warden’s car to his family’s Nebraska dust bowl …
My voyage of discovery to study architecture in its original setting, absorbing its history and culture. En route I met many people and learned a lot about human nature.
My St. Louis Writers Guild colleague Cherie Postill has written a no-nonsense guide on beta readers: how to find, qualify, train and get intelligent feedback from them: How to Train a Beta Reader and Sell More Books. Tools for beta readers Her techniques include providing two ingredients often missing from …
My writer’s journey began with letters I wrote home from college. Yes, we had long distance telephone service in those early times, but the good stuff — detailed descriptions of my doings, parental advice and our deepest feelings — were best expressed in those long, thoughtful ramblings, often written late …
