Authors for Boys State
Four with an Iowa Connection
I’ve been a counselor at Hawkeye Boys State (HBS) this week, a program sponsored by the American Legion to equip soon-to-be high school seniors with the rudiments of citizenship, political engagement, and government. This is my fifth year of service at HBS, with a gap of 43 years, between 1978 and 2021 (which I’m assured is a “gap record”).
This week has been unusually rewarding, having recruited one of last year’s Boys Staters, Carter, to serve with me as a counselor this year. Our adjacent barracks constitute one of eight Boys State “cities”. A particular point of pride: our city is home to five of seven elected statewide officers, including Governor and Lieutenant Governor, with most credit here due to Carter.
Significant changes have occurred in HBS in recent decades. For example, barracks are now air conditioned! And counselors now provide participants with a one-hour program on the topic of our choosing. I introduced them to four authors with Iowa connections: Hamlin Garland, Edna Ferber, Frederick Manfred, and MacKinlay Kantor. What follows is an excerpt of my presentation.
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Hamlin Garland’s Iowa years include brief time spent in Winneshiek County before his family migrated to Mitchell County, where I now live. Through his fiction, Garland became a leading spokesperson for 19th century agrarian society. While not the first writer with a farm background, Garland was the first to capture the hardships, the disappointments, and the isolation of farm life. His pioneering was accomplished first with a plow, ultimately with a pen, and the combination brought a fresh voice and a new perspective to literature.
Edna Ferber spent seven childhood years living in Ottumwa. Ferber’s most famous books are “Showboat”, which was made into a musical; “Giant”, more recognized for the movie, and “So Big”, for which she received the Pulitzer. Like Garland, in her Iowa childhood, Ferber found fuel for much of her professional life. There’s a significant difference, however. Garland experienced the isolation of rural farm life; Ferber felt a very different form of isolation… the discrimination that came from being Jewish in a working-class community with few religious non-Christians.
In a peculiar way, however, isolation may have been a career asset. In Ottumwa, Ferber discovered books. According to her biographer, the Ferbers attended theater, “… wherever there was an alternative to reality, the Ferbers attended. Edna retained all that she’d seen and would regale the family for weeks afterwards with imitations and recitations.” (Sounds like an emerging author.)
Frederick Manfred’s greatest literary contribution is a five-book series entitled the “Buckskin Man Tales”. These fictional works explore and expose a section of the country that Manfred knew best, a region he called “Siouxland,” where Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, and Nebraska come together.
These books are “Conquering Horse,” Native American, pre-white times about 1800; “Lord Grizzly,” mountain man times, 1823-24; “Scarlet Plume,” the Dakota War of 1862; “King of Spades,” Black Hills justice in 1876; and “Riders of Judgment,” cattleman times in 1892. In his tales, Manfred drinks deeply from the physical setting, the historic settling, and the brutal savagery that characterized much of the 1800s.
MacKinlay Kantor demonstrated considerable versatility as an author: newspaper reporter, poet, journalist, novelist, memoirist, short-story author, pulp-fiction writer, crime and mystery writer, war correspondent, screenwriter, children’s author, historian, plus a writer of historical fiction about America’s past. Some of Kantor’s books are voluminous. “Andersonville,” his Pulitzer-Prize winner, runs 730 pages. “Spirit Lake,” a historical novel set in northwest Iowa, is 957 pages. Kantor thought it among his career’s crowning achievements, although most critics and many readers disagreed.
So, why are Garland, Ferber, Manfred, and Kantor worthy of our attention today, decades later? In part, because without resource, advantage or introduction, they became distinguished authors largely through personal persistence and determination. Their broad interests and their impact on society spread into virtually every aspect of American culture. Now, these authors have been introduced to 2023 Hawkeye Boys Staters… and “Showing Up” readers. Books by all four are available at public libraries.
Excellent. Refreshing. Thank you.