A Son of the Middle Border

“Wide as the sea, full of multitudinous, secret, whispered colloquies,—a meeting place of winds and of sunlight,—our fields ran to the world's end.”

A Son of the Middle Border by Hamlin Garland, celebrated in Dr. John Senior’s 1000 Good Books List, is a vivid memoir of life on the American frontier after the Civil War. Through a boy’s eyes growing into manhood, Garland chronicles his family’s pursuit of a better life across the Midwest’s untamed prairies. He paints a stirring portrait of golden wheat fields, harvest camaraderie, and fireside songs, set against the settlers’ toil, sacrifice, and broken dreams of the West’s promise.

This timeless account of a lost folk world, before mechanization’s rise, speaks to hearts longing for simpler days. Dr. Senior praises these ‘good books’—bursting with authentic human experiences—as essential seeds for the Catholic imagination, nurturing minds for the ‘great books’ of Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine, and enriching a soil often barren in modern life. A classic that beckons readers to rediscover the roots of a nation in the making.

Format: Softcover | 5.5 x 8.5 inches
Pages: 447 pages, illustrated.