Thursday, October 13, 2011

Top ten farming novels

Belinda McKeon, an award-winning playwright and journalist, was born in Ireland in 1979 and grew up on her parents' farm. She studied literature at Trinity College, Dublin, and worked as an arts writer for The Irish Times. McKeon has an MFA in creative writing from Columbia and lives in Brooklyn and Ireland.

Her debut novel is Solace.

At the Guardian, McKeon named her top ten farming novels.

One title on the list:
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

To riff on Kavanagh, Alexandra Bergson knew the plight – the plight, that is, of taking a punishing stretch of prairie and turning it into a prosperous farm. In the young immigrant woman who takes on the land after her father's death, Cather found a heroine through whom, in 1913, she could write about a country. But in the farmland of Nebraska, she finds one of her most compelling characters.
Read about another novel on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue