Proulx's stories fit into a significant tradition of regional writing. Though an inordinate amount of the canon of American literature is set in the major metropolitan centers of the East, many authors have endeavored to turn readers' attention to regions that, though less populous, are no less interesting.

Hamlin Garland, writing from the end of the nineteenth century through the 1920s, focused his attention on the Midwestern farm and the privations suffered there. His Main-Travelled Roads (1891) is a collection of stories that take as their subject Midwestern farm life. In stories such as "Under the Lion's Paw" Garland draws attention to the privations and inequities endured by farmers and actively solicits calls for social reform. Though not nearly as reform-minded, Proulx is equally interested in the particular problems faced by the residents of a particular place.

Another reform-minded regionalist was John Steinbeck, who in his masterful...