Originally published in 1891, Main-Travelled Roads includes eleven short stories set in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, or the region of America Hamlin Garland called the āMiddle Border.ā Depicting an agrarian life of exploitation, misogyny, and poverty, Garlandās radical, realist storiesāwritten in a mode he called āveritismāārefute romantic conceptions of the rural Midwest.
Unrelenting, yet infused with a hopeful vision of how things ought to be, this collection is gripping, hard-hitting, and surprisingly beautiful. Main-Travelled Roads was Garlandās first major success, a little-known classic of American literature and the Midwest.