Plains Song

Plains Song is among Wright Morris's most richly felt and most beautifully written novels. It is the story of a family, the Atkinses, who settle, farm, and bring up three new generations in the middle western plains from the early years of the twentieth century to the 1970s. More particularly, it is the story of the Atkins women, their relationships among themselves and the men and women in their lives.

At the heart of family and of the book is Cora, the resolute woman who knows what she wants as well as how to settle for what she gets. Her acceptance of her life, her looks, her meager joys, is as affecting as it is profound. She is the backbone of the family, the standard by which all the other women are measured. As the lives of the women change over the years, there is always the example of Cora which dominates them—Belle, the woman from the Ozarks who becomes Cora's sister-in-law; Madge, the daughter who watches the midwestern world she was born into disappear; and Sharon Rose, Bell's daughter, who seeks out a new world for herself in the East.

Wright Morris has never been better at capturing the understanding, the nuances, the hurts, the conflicts, the misunderstandings, the courage and the sheer struggle of the human animal to survive and maintain sanity. Plains Song is a novel to cherish.