Main-Travelled Roads

Main-Travelled Roads,
short stories by Hamlin Garland, published in 1891. Late examples of the school of local color, these tales deal with farm life in the Middle West. The volume is unified by the author's conception of “The Main-Travelled Road in the West,” which “may lead past a bend in the river where the water laughs eternally over its shallows…. Mainly it is long and wearyful…. Like the main-travelled road of life it is traversed by many classes of people, but the poor and the weary predominate.”