Martin Luther College

First published in 1899, this graphic depiction of urban American life centers around its title character, McTeague, a dentist practicing in San Francisco at the turn of the century. While at first content with his life and friendship with an ambitious man named Marcus, McTeague eventually courts and marries Trina, a frugal young woman who wins a large sum of money in a lottery. The greed of the majority of the characters in the novel creates a chain...

The novel that introduced the first great American hero: the cowboy
The Virginian cuts an impressive figure when the unnamed narrator of Owen Wister’s groundbreaking novel first encounters him in Medicine Bow, Wyoming. Dark-haired and physically imposing, the charismatic Virginian quickly befriends the narrator, whom he nicknames “the tenderfoot,” and the two embark on a three-hundred-mile journey to the ranch where the...

Excerpt: "[Lumbermen] are in such a hurry to get rich that they'll leave their grandchildren a desert. They cut and slash in every direction, and then fires come and the country is ruined. Our rivers depend upon the forests for water. The trees draw the rain; the leaves break it up and let it fall in mists and drippings; it seeps into the ground, and is held by roots. If the trees are destroyed the rain rushes off on the surface and floods the rivers....

The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer (1913) is a novel by Oscar Micheaux. Before he became the first Black movie mogul in American history, Micheaux was a homesteader-turned novelist whose passion for storytelling and business acumen were born from a youth of hard work and struggle. The son of a former slave, Micheaux dedicated his life to countering the dominant narratives of American history while inspiring and empowering Black people around...

The classic story of a hardworking country boy in Texas in the late 1860s and the brave dog who becomes his companion and protector.

The Spirit of the Border is an historical novel written by Zane Grey, first published in 1906. The novel is based on events occurring in the Ohio River Valley in the late eighteenth century. It features the exploits of Lewis Wetzel, a historical personage who had dedicated his life to the destruction of Native Americans and to the protection of nascent white settlements in that region. The story deals with the attempt by Moravian Church missionaries...

The Virginian is a 1902 debut novel set in the Wild West by the American novelist Owen Wister. Describing the life of a cowboy on a cattle ranch in Wyoming, it helped establish the western novel as a literary genre. The unnamed protagonist in The Virginian, who courts a local schoolteacher and defers personal revenge while meting out justice to a cattle thief, set the tone for the rough but civilized cowboy, a prototype for scores of ensuing books,...

This wide-ranging book illuminates the importance of the Western in American history. It explores the interconnections between the Western in both literature and film and the United States in the 20th century. Structured chronologically, the book traces the evolution of the Western as a uniquely American form. The author argues that America's frontier past was quickly transformed into a set of symbols and myths, an American meta-narrative that came...

In 1870, the young San Francisco–based writer and editor Bret Harte (1836–1902) first compiled a single-volume edition of his rousing stories of life in the Wild West. Entitled The Luck of Roaring Camp, and Other Sketches, the book propelled him almost overnight from local celebrity to American literary lion. Four of the most famous of those tales are included in this collection: the title story, "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," "Tennessee's Partner,"...

Horseman, Pass By tells the story of Homer Bannon, an old-time cattleman who epitomizes the frontier values of honesty and decency, and Hud, his unscrupulous stepson. Caught in the middle is the narrator, Homer's young grandson Lonnie, who is as much drawn to his grandfather's strength of character as he is to Hud's hedonism and materialism. When first published in 1961, Horseman, Pass By caused a sensation in Texas literary circles for its stark,...