Goodbye, Wisconsin

Rural Wisconsin was still a wilderness in these early 1920s stories by Glenway Wescott. The distances between farms and small towns seemed great in those days. So, too, was the struggle of social order and religion against poverty, nature, and a stubborn streak of lawlessness. But the real adventure in these stories is in Wescott’s deep understanding of human nature. His characters may be tragic, heroic, comic, or inspiring but, if there is one theme here, it is the search for personal freedom.