| Headlights on the Prairie: Essays on Home Contributor(s): Rebein, Robert (Author) |
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ISBN: 0700624716 ISBN-13: 9780700624713 Publisher: University Press of Kansas OUR PRICE: $22.46 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: July 2017 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | United States - State & Local - Midwest(ia,il,in,ks,mi,mn,mo,nd,ne,oh,sd,wi - Literary Collections | Essays |
| Dewey: 978.176 |
| LCCN: 2017020139 |
| Physical Information: 0.5" H x 5.5" W x 8.4" (0.55 lbs) 184 pages |
| Themes: - Geographic Orientation - Kansas - Demographic Orientation - Rural |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: At the long-term care facility where Robert Rebein's father lands after a horrific car crash, a shadow box hangs next to each room, its contents suggesting something of the occupant's life. In Headlights on the Prairie, Rebein has created a literary shadow box of sorts, a book in which moments of singular grace and grit encapsulate a life and a world. In the tradition of memoirs such as Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life and Ivan Doig's This House of Sky, these essays bring a storyteller's gifts to life's dramas, large and small. Following his award-winning turn on his hometown of Dodge City, Rebein takes us back to the high plains world where his family has farmed and ranched since the 1920s. It is a world populated by feedlot cowboys, stock-car drivers, and farm kids dreaming of basketball glory. Here too we find the darker tales of damaged young men returning from war, long-haul truckers addicted to crystal meth, and the sadly heroic residents of a small-town nursing home grandiloquently named Manor of the Plains. Whether contemplating a fiery crash at a race track, coming to terms with an aging parent, or navigating the last days of a beloved family dog, Rebein offers a subtle, unsparing, often moving look at the moments that go into making a writer and a man. Seen in sharp detail, and recalled from a distance, his is a story of how a man can leave his home on the prairie--and yet never really get out of Dodge. |
Contributor Bio(s): Rebein, Robert: - Robert Rebein is professor of English and chair of the Department of English at Indiana University Purdue University in Indianapolis. His books include Dragging Wyatt Earp: A Personal History of Dodge City and Hicks, Tribes, and Dirty Realists: American Fiction after Postmodernism. |