When the noted historian Frederick Jackson Turner stated in an address in 1893 that the settlement of the West explained American development, he focused attention on an aspect of American culture which has received constant study and analysis ever since…. And perhaps the most whole-hearted exponent of [Turner's] viewpoint among contemporary American men of letters is Conrad Richter. His fiction is all but entirely a nostalgic hymn of praise for the vigor of the American pioneer. (p. 311)
Much has happened to the American dream since [President Andrew] Jackson died in 1845. Even in his lifetime those forces which would cause much of the disillusionment with that dream recorded in fiction by writers from Hamlin Garland to John Steinbeck were already in motion. Conrad Richter focuses his attention not on the corruption of the dream but on the dream itself. He belongs to that group of writers who are impressed with the strength and perseverance of the pioneer, and feel that this strength was a direct result of having dealt with the rigors of the frontier.
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