Home on the Range: A Century on the High Plains

After the Civil War, the author's great-grandparents migrated to western Kansas to become wheat farmers on a lonely, treeless, windswept land with a harsh climate. Dickenson, a freelance journalist, who grew up in Macdonald, a rural community in the northwest corner of the state, here interweaves, in engaging detail, local and family history with his own memories of the 1930s and '40s. Life centered around school, church and harvest. In its heyday, Macdonald had a population of 435; today it is down to 200. Dickenson describes how the area was settled, how it developed and changed, where it stands now: farms and schools have consolidated, businesses have closed, people have moved away. It is a familiar tale of back-road America; readers with a farming or rural background will find themselves at home here. Author tour. (Mar.)