Heart of the Country

Hmm. I am alternating between rereading the Levendeur series and a volume on my shelf long ignored - Heart of the Country, by Greg Matthews.

I have now reached the halfway point of the latter. I don't know - I thought I was fairly open-minded but this book is described as a "gritty narrative"and that is putting it mildly. There is absolutely nothing attractive about the land or people of mid-19th century Kansas in this book. I know the West has been romanticized and whitewashed to the point of nausea, but this is too far the other direction. I have held out on books before, hoping it will get better. Sometimes it never happens (Barcelona, by another Australian, Robert Hughes). Even when the anti-hero gets treated poorly, I just thought, "You are such a jerk, you deserved that!"The story has improved just enough to keep me interested.