Growing Up with the Town: Family & Community on the Great Plains by Dorothy Hubbard Schwieder (review)

BO O K R E VIEW S 3 5 5 In short, there is as much drama as science in Cutright’s ostensibly scien­ tific chronicle, a fact which may explain why Paul A. Johnsgard—who penned a diverting introduction to the 2003 edition of Cutright’s book—has recently written and illustrated a systematic and thoroughly undramatic compendium on the same subject, Lewis and Clark on the Great Plains: A Natural History. Johnsgard updates and reorganizes under geographical and technical headings the botanical and zoological information that Cutright treated historically in his narrative of the expedition’s progress across the continent. Johnsgard made his book handier than Cutright’s for scientific purposes of reference and definition. It includes six useful maps and thirty-eight of Johnsgard ’s own drawings of plants and animals encountered by Lewis and Clark. There are, as well, twenty-five pages of descriptions of “Sites of Biological and Historical Interest” along the Lewis and Clark Trail. Though not aimed at a lit­ erary audience, Johnsgard’s topical natural history of Lewis and Clark’s expedi­ tion may still be useful to writers for its accessible descriptions and illustrations. Qrowing Up with the Town: Family & Community on the Qreat Plains. By Dorothy Hubbard Schwieder. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2002. 232 pages, $29.95. Reviewed by Jackie Pugh Kogan C alifornia State U niversity, N orthridge A dilemma memoirists face is how to make personal experiences of uni­ versal interest. In Growing Up with the Town, Dorothy Hubbard Schwieder tells the story of three generations of her family in Presho, South Dakota, beginning with the town’s creation in 1905 and ending in the mid-1950s when the author leaves for college. By contextualizing this personal and family history within other histories—local, social, the American West—Schwieder renders Growing Up with the Town a fascinating read. Presho was established, literally overnight, as a stop on the “Milwaukee Road,” the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad’s plan to create new town sites at regular intervals on its run between the eastern part of South Dakota, already reasonably well-settled, and Rapid City. This intervening area was largely uninhabited, and, in addition to its access to ready transportation, land became available through the Homestead Act and via a series of lotteries held to dispense with ‘“surplus’ Indian lands, left over after land allotments had been made to individual Indians” (34). Schwieder’s focus is on the attraction that Presho, one of these “instant towns,” held for entrepreneurs and estab­ lished businessmen, as well as the nature of the town’s development: “Within a year ... Presho’s population was estimated at two thousand; four years later, the 1910 census found almost eleven thousand people living in Lyman County” (34). It is in tracking the town’s growth and patterns of change that Schwieder’s meticulous research, notes, and insights broaden the range of her 3 5 6 W e s t e r n A m e r ic a n L it e r a t u r e F a l l 2 0 0 4 text to a study of the evolution of small towns on the American prairie—the kinds and numbers of businesses established, the rapidity with which they changed hands accompanied by a significant turnover in the population, and the variety of enterprises that specific individuals who remained in Presho engaged in over time. In addition to the history of western settlement, social history becomes a strong element of Schwieder’s story. In considering her grandmothers’ hard­ ships and adjustments to pioneer life, Schwieder discusses the strength of “matrifocal kin networks,” the vital family bonding among mothers/daughters/ sisters/siblings in harsh and remote frontier environments (30). A chapter on work and the work ethic in her family and the town during Schwieder’s grow­ ing up in the 1930s and 1940s provides connection beyond facts and statistics to the human and social values inherent in this place and time. Throughout the text, while weaving in her own memories and family sto­ ries, Schwieder also seamlessly melds the part her family plays in the town in terms of their economic...