Great Plains

by Ian Frazier

Release Date: 04 May, 2001

Edition: Paperback

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On the road

Great Plains is a cross between Kathleen Norris' "Dakota" and William Least Heat Moon's "Blue Highways." It's a road book about the high plains -- that semi-arid, often treeless region covering 10 states lying between the Rockies and the Mid-West. Rather than a day-by-day log of a single journey, it is an account of many trips, as its author criss-crosses the terrain, jumping from place to place and from one historical period to another. When you are done, you have a sense of a vast land and a great 200-year swath of history.

Fragments of times and places that we may know from movies and text books come together in a sweeping tapestry containing: Indian tribes, buffalo herds, cattle drives, railroads, homesteaders, droughts, blizzards, grasshoppers, long rivers, sand hills, badlands, small pox epidemics, black settlers, missile silos, strip mining, the Dust Bowl, the Ogalala aquifer, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Custer, Bonnie and Clyde, and the experience of driving a van along straight, empty highways in all weather, picking up hitchhikers, sleeping overnight by the road, and stopping to talk to ordinary people living extraordinary lives in a depopulated landscape most travelers know only as "flyover," that featureless land seen from above between East and West Coasts.

It's a great enjoyable read that meanders over its subject, sometimes with a sense of wonder, sadness, amusement, and even -- at a fashion show in Nicodemus, Kansas -- unadulterated joy!

Let's Go Right Now!

Imagine a car trip thru the Plains states with Umberto Eco and Bill Bryson. You are along in the back seat. As you drive along Umberto enlightens on western lore....Crazy Horse as American culture hero, Lawrence Welk as a musical powerhouse, smallpox vaccination programs for Indians in the 1830's, the ecological importance of tumbleweeds, and on and on. Bill takes us to see Sitting Bull's house lot, abondoned ABM control centers, a cattle ranch 50 miles long, off beat museums, cheap motels. There's plenty of hitchhikers and odd characters along the way to add their stories. Neither one of these authors are in the book, but to me Frazier has the many of their good attributes and it makes for a most plesant read. As you turn the pages you don't know what's around the next bend. But for sure there's going to be bizzare revelations and fun sightseeing. My favorite chapter is #4. It's sort of how the west was tamed. Told in a stream of conscieness using fact/sentences barely related, it's good. Frazier really knows Indians and western lore. I'm sure you'll find it a fun read and maybe see the plains diferently.