Driftless

Driftless
Author: David Rhodes
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Total Pages: 456
Release: 2010-01-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1571318003

“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

Driftless

Driftless
Author: Danny Wilcox Frazier
Publisher: Center for Documentary Studies
Total Pages: 124
Release: 2007
Genre: Photography
ISBN:

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.

Driftless

Driftless
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2018-09
Genre:
ISBN: 9781942953388

The Physical Geography and Geology of the Driftless Area

The Physical Geography and Geology of the Driftless Area
Author: Eric C. Carson
Publisher: Geological Society of America
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2019-11-04
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0813725437

"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"--

Crossing the Driftless

Crossing the Driftless
Author: Lynne Diebel
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2015-03-24
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0299302946

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.

The Driftless Area

The Driftless Area
Author: Tom Drury
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
Total Pages: 133
Release: 2012-11-27
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 080219320X

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

Chasing the Light

Chasing the Light
Author: Mark Allister
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2014-10-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 145294332X

“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.

The Driftless Reader

The Driftless Reader
Author: Curt Meine
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780299314804

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.

New Haven’s Sentinels

New Haven’s Sentinels
Author: Jelle Zeilinga de Boer
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2013-10-21
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0819573752

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.