Julianne Couch sets out to illuminate the lives and hopes of small-town residents from nine small communities in five states in the Midwest and Great Plains: Io

We live these days in a virtual nation of cities and celebrities, dreaming a small-town America rendered ever stranger by purveyors of nostalgia and dark vision

Most people in the United States live in urban areas; still, there are nearly fifty million people living in small towns of just a few thousand people or less.

2004 Minnesota Book Award Winner The Midwestern small town has long held an iconic place in American culture--from the imaginings of Sinclair Lewis's Main Stree

The Midwest has produced a robust literary heritage. Its authors have won half of the nation's Nobel Prizes for Literature plus a significant number of Pulitzer