Review of The Dream of a Broken Field by Diane Glancy

Authors

Date of this Version

Summer 2012

Citation

Great Plains Quarterly 32:3 (Summer 2012).

Comments

Copyright © 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.

Abstract

In her latest book, Diane Glancy, professor emerita at Macalester College, Minnesota, and author of numerous novels, short story collections, and essay collections, returns to the topics that have always been the focus of her work: the importance of space, of landscape, and of travel; reflections on (nonfiction) writing and what she calls "geographies of language" in The Dream of a Broken Field; the difficulties of bridging Native American and European heritages (Glancy has Cherokee, English, and German ancestry); the uneasy combination of Christianity and Indigeneity; and her personal emotional and family history. Like her previous work, especially Claiming Breath (1992), the book reflects her private and academic journeys on the roads of the Great Plains and adjacent territory (from Minnesota to Iowa, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Arkansas) and beyond, presenting the reader with an update of Glancy's life, her retirement and move to Kansas City, her continuing professional activities, and her life as a grandmother. The Dream of a Broken Field mixes various nonfictional forms: autobiography, diary writing and the confessional, prose poetry, the essay, and history.