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Copyright
2008
River Falls 
Public Library

August Derleth wrote many children's books and many books about the land and some really nice poetry.  The Edge of Night, a book of poetry he wrote in 1945, has applications for today.  Many of the poems concern war in all its horror and unthinkable-ness.  The people in his poems have the same fears and hopes we share in the aftermath of September 11.  In "Berlin, Leipzig, Einden, Mannheim, etc." are the lines, "... For whom did you vote when men of good will gave warning?"  Many of the poems have the theme of nature and our relationship to it.

The August Derleth Reader is a compendium of both poetry and prose.  "He writes of a land and a people that are bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh", so said Edward Wagenknecht in a review of Derleth's writing.  

Derleth was a friend and publisher of H.P. Lovecraft, another Wisconsin author worth getting to know.

Jane Hamilton, author of A Map of the World and the Book of Ruth, has written a slightly less black book, Disobedience!  Written from the view point of Henry Shaw, it is a novel of discovery, discourse, and disturbance bound to please a large audience.  The characters are writ huge and and believable.  Ms. Hamilton combines grace and compassion in telling her tales.

Ben Logan, know probably for his The Land Remembers which  has been read on Wisconsin Public Radio several times, has written The Empty Meadow, a fictional account of one summer in the life of a seventeen-year-old boy.  The setting is south-western Wisconsin, home of Aldo Leopold of Sand County Almanac fame, and the time is the late 1930's.  It is a story of growth and enlightenment.  The influence of the land is pervasive and palpable.  I feel Mr. Logan and Mr. Derleth would probably have recognized themselves as fellow Wisconsinites in love with the land and its people.