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Reviews 251 Using Garland as a point of departure Meyer next evaluates the more important novels selected from the considerable body of Mid-West farm fiction published from 1891 to 1965. He measures the range and limits of these works against four major themes. Historical: mainly the pioneer and/or immigrant saga (wherein are found the epics of the genre) but also the conflict inherent in a rapidly changing technology of farming. Philosoph­ ical: the realities of farm life and the acceptance, rejection, or rationaliza­ tion of same. Socological: intercourse between the farmer and those he dealt with at social and economic levels. Psychological: emotional problems on the farm, especially in male-female relationships. The final chapter follows a general order in showing the fluctuating development of farm fiction in the twentieth century and has some interest­ ing things to say about who reads farm novels and why; certainly most farmers do not. A well annotated appendix of 140 Mid-West farm novels adds much to the book’s usefulness and the insights offered by Meyer into the complexities of farm life are one of its strengths. Although a straight chronological approach to this study might have simplified its use as a refer­ ence tool the format chosen serves the author’s purpose admirably. It stands as a genuine contribution to the study of our national literature. STAN NELSON, Stillwater, Minnesota One Time, I Saw Morning Come Home. By Clair Huffaker. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974. 320 pp., $8.95.) Unlike Huffaker’s wildly imaginative and outlandish Nobody Loves a Drunken Indian (1967) and The Cowboy and the Cossack (1973), One Time, I saw Morning Come Home is the gently and often poetically told story of a town and a time, of two families, and, above all, of the bond of love between the author’s parents that sustained them through personal tragedies and ultimately gave inspiration to the town. The town is Magna, Utah, a small community on the outskirts of Salt Lake City that during the time covered by the major portion of the book — from the mid-1920s to World War II — was dominated by the nearby copper mine and smelter, from which billowed “the killing taint of arsenic, that was always and always in the air.” The time is the author’s childhood — the years when people like his parents cherished Indian motorcycles, Model A sedans, Rin Tin Tin movies, and excursions to the Salt Palace Pavilion, and courageously endured the hardships of layoffs, unemployment, hunger, and separation. The two families are those of the young couple — the loving Mormon sisters of Orlean, the author’s mother, and the half dozen vastly different brothers and sisters of Clair, the author’s father (after whom 252 Western American Literature the author was named), as well as the author’s weak-spined paternal grand­ father and oddly unloving grandmother. The many threads of this book, which is subtitled “A Remembrance,” are tied together by Huffaker’s affectionate tribute to his parents. From their love-at-first-sight when they were sixteen, through their marriage at seventeen and the remainder of their lives, their relationship was an unques­ tioned and boundless source of strength and purpose for them both — he a reckless man’s man, she a gentle lover of poetry, music, children, and things that grow in the earth. This is poignantly narrated family history at its best. Though some of the episodes have the flavor of treasured family anecdotes, and some of the humor is contrived, the story as a whole is richly evocative of the courage of commonplace people as they face their commonplace troubles. Even the theme — that God answers the prayer for strength by giving problems to be faced — is commonplace, but it is convincingly and movingly dramatized. Huffaker is most effective, however, in the reconstruction of episodes in which his novel-writing bent has freer rein. The tunnel accident in which his young father was almost killed when his “One-man” collided head-on with a locomotive, the electrical fire in the Chemical Storage building in which one of Huffaker’s uncles became tragically scarred — such vividly recreated episodes combine human drama...

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