A mature and steady craftsman, [Wright Morris] never writes badly; but in order to write compellingly he has to return to the plains. No landscape moves him so deeply as the somber, muted plains country: for nowhere else is his depth of reference so nearly absolute. And nowhere in his fiction does emotion emerge from detail so beautifully as in this precise and vivid book.

Though "Plains Song" is comparatively short, it is very much a story of generations—specifically, generations of women. (p. 3)

The triumph of the book, in terms of craft, is that we experience the sense of the slow passage of time so necessary to such a story. Yet it is told subtly and with economy: the textures of farm life on the plains are beautifully rendered. Animals are important in the lives of farm people, and contribute to the novel's quiet humor, if only...