Throughout her career, Proulx has shown a great talent for capturing the essence of a particular corner of the world in her fiction.

Like her meditation on Wyoming in Close Range, Proulx's other publications focus on a single place and bring out its character and spirit. Proulx works diligently to prepare to write her works, often living in the region she wishes to depict for a substantial period of time.

Her debut collection, Heart Songs (1988), focuses on working-class life in New England. The stories take place in rural areas where blue-collar characters confront the migration of middle- and upper-class urbanites to their neck of the woods. She thus reveals a schism between those who make a living from the northeastern landscape and those who can afford to enjoy its pastoral splendor. Like the workers in Close Range, those who appear in the stories of Heart Songs...