A Son of the Middle Border

Written by Hamlin Garland

Narrated by Grover Gardner

Drawing on the history of his own family, Pulitzer Prize winner Hamlin Garland chronicles the experiences of a generation. A Son of the Middle Border, Garland’s bittersweet narrative of growing up on a Wisconsin farm, captures in vivid, moving detail the stories of the thousands of courageous and optimistic Americans who sought new and prosperous lives on the mid-western frontier and discovered not only the grandeur of the plains, but the immense toll nature demands from those who try to tame the land.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blackstone Audio
• Release date: Jan 1, 2006
• ISBN: 9780786137787

Hamlin Garland

Hannibal Hamlin Garland (September 14, 1860 – March 4, 1940) was an American novelist, poet, essayist, short story writer, Georgist, and psychical researcher. He is best known for his fiction involving hard-working Midwestern farmers.

Reviews for A Son of the Middle Border

[jerry2book-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As a midwesterner I knew the early pioneers had it tough but it was really very bleak. It is comparable to Giants in the Earth.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My fond memories of growing up in Wisconsin create a warm place in my heart for this memoir about growing up on the mid-western frontier. Hamlin Garland captures the essence of the place and time that was already a memory during my boyhood. He does this through advocacy of a form of realism that blended the realist's insistence upon verisimilitude of detail with the impressionist's tendency to paint objects as they appear to his individual eye. The veritist differed from the realist, Garland claimed, in his insistence upon the centrality of the artist's individual vision: the artist should paint life as he sees it. In doing this he brings his world alive for the reader. I think the depiction of a region's characters, customs, and textures of life creates an interesting read even for those who do not share a personal connection with the beauty of Midwestern life.