[The setting for "The Sea of Grass"] is Old New Mexico, land of the great cattle kings and of their vast ranges then slowly being invaded by the homesteaders…. The resemblances between this novel and Willa Cather's "Lost Lady" are … so striking that one is forever remembering the earlier book as one reads the new. Although this is not the masterpiece it is a good reproduction, something more, perhaps, than a reproduction.

Conrad Richter's chief skill in story writing lies in his use of his scene. New Mexico of the early days lives in these pages. But Conrad Richter is definitely a romantic writer, never a realist. And because he is a romantic writer he casts a kind of golden glow over a scene which other authors have given us in harsh, cruel or tragic colors. Nor is he completely wrong in using this early American scene as a romanticist must. New Mexico is, indeed, a land of myth, a land of curious poetic superstitions….

One wonders, indeed, about one thing only: in so consistently romantic a treatment of the Southwest as Mr. Richter's, are not the truly historical bases for the changes in this frontier country being denied? The homesteaders did finally take the land…. The old frontier had to go. Mr. Richter himself sees that, but for him "those were the grand old days." And today the early conquerors … are old men with many a yarn to tell. Mr. Richter collects their yarns.

There is just one criticism to be made of Conrad Richter, once we have acknowledged that he writes very well, that he recreates atmosphere excellently, that he is economic, impressive and dramatic in his effects: as a collector of early Americana he inclines too strongly toward the romantic only. There was more in the Old New Mexico than he gives us. A richer canvas, a bolder stroke, a certain ruthless candor would make Richter a writer of first order. He sees vividly, feels accurately, but in one range only—the poetic. He is in the grip of a continuous nostalgia (and that is the mood of this whole novel) for a dead past. And the reader of "The Sea of Grass" will be caught in this nostalgia for the old beauty of the grazing country ridden by powerful, proud men. He will sympathize, too, as Lutie and her son Brock did with the "nesters," the agricultural settlers. But he will feel all this only through identifying himself with one very small group of characters in their prouder and nobler moments. "The Sea of Grass" has not indicated that Mr. Richter's vision is greater. It has, however, indicated that he is studying his craft, through models, very carefully.