SOURCE: “Raintree County and the Power of Place,” in Markham Review, Vol. 8, Winter, 1979, pp. 36-40.

In the following essay, Erisman analyzes Raintree County's concern with the influence of geographical location on Americans.

Ross Lockridge, Jr.'s novel, Raintree County (1948) has not lacked critical attention. A Book-of-the-Month Club selection and the winner of a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Novel Award before publication, it enjoyed a brief spurt of popular notice. More recently, it has attracted a degree of scholarly consideration. It has been discussed in the context of the epic tradition, has been read through the spectacles of Freudian analysis, has been held up as a good example of many-leveled fiction, and has been variously judged to be a statement of continuing faith in American mythology and a banal, flatulent piece of self-serving hackwork.¹

That Lockridge intended his novel to be an epic, even mythic account of the American experience is...