The Big Empty

Contemporary Nebraska Nonfiction Writers

Ladette Randolph, Nina Shevchuk-Murray

• Publisher: Bison Books
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9780803207400
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

A vast, barren landscape or a place of subtle natural beauty; the middle of nowhere or the gateway to the cultural and historical riches of the West; many things to many people and a cipher to many more—the great state of Nebraska is by force of circumstances a place of possibilities. What these possibilities are and what they promise are precisely what the writers of The Big Empty tell us. Exploring the state from its rural reaches to its urban engines, from its marvelous ecosystems to its myriad historical and cultural offerings, these narratives evoke Nebraska in all its facets. Writers as diverse as Ron Hansen, Ted Kooser, Michael Anania, Bob Kerrey, Mary Pipher, Delphine Red Shirt, and William Kloefkorn, among many others, bring a wealth of perspectives and styles to topics such as the Oregon Trail and the Cheyenne Exodus, farming and Internet cafés, politics, weather, and family secrets. The result is a portrait whose broad strokes and rich detail capture the mysterious character of Nebraska.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• The Land That Time Forgot
• Myths of the American West: Two Views of the Oregon Trail
• Preface from Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps
• Nuts
• Far Brought from The Nature of Home: A Lexicon and Essays
• Excerpt from In the Kingdom of Grass
• Hereafter in Fields
• Organic Vertegration from The Farming Game
• Excerpt from This Death by Drowning
• Uncle Vic’s Mule
• Solomon Butcher from Cottonwood Roots
• Two Wrens
• The Missouri and I
• Excerpt from Stranger to the Game
• Excerpts from “Prairie Homeboys”
• An Indian Candidate for Public Office
• Weighed Down by Buckskin
• Excerpt from “From Pine Ridge to Paris”
• In the Time of the Buffalo
• Excerpt from Magpie Rising: Sketches from the Great Plains
• Excerpt from “Tending to Ruin”
• Excerpt from When I Was a Young Man: A Memoir
• Excerpt from Being Home
• Excerpt from “Children of Hope, Children of Tears”
• Immigration, Technology, and Sense of Place
• Concerning Freaks, Book Clubs, and the Unbearable Distances of the Plains
• Source Acknowledgments
• Contributors