What does it mean to deeply love a home place that haunts us still? From Mark Twain to Grant Wood to Garrison Keillor, regionalists from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age have explored the American Gothic and the homegrown fatalism that flourish in many of the nation’s most far-flung and forgotten places. The Haunt of Home introduces us to a cast of real-life Midwestern characters grappling with the Gothic in their own lives, from promising young professionals debating the perennial ‘Should I stay or should I go’ dilemma, to recent émigrés and entrepreneurs seeking personal reinvention, to faithful boosters determined to keep their communities alive despite the odds. In The Haunt of Home Zachary Michael Jack considers the many ways a region’s abiding spirit shapes the ethos of a land and its people, offering portraits of others who, like himself, are determined to live out the unique promise and predicament of the Gothic.
Table of Content
Introduction: Middle American Gothic and the Haunt of Home
Part I: Legacies
1. Life in Sunnier Climes
2. Playing Ball for the Team of the Dead
3. Springtime on the Prairie: A Middle American Gothic
Part II: Visitations
4. The Promise of New Blood
5. Pitchforks and Pies
6. The Casket-maker’s Son
7. Death by Mail
8. Life and Death in Oz
9. Exhuming the Regionalist Body
10. Dredge: A Middle American Gothic
Part III: Resurrections
11. Ghost Players
12. Cornfield Cathedrals
13. Dovesong: A Middle American Dirge
Afterword: Life after Death
About the author
Zachary Michael Jack is an award-winning author of many books, including, most recently Country Views and Wish You Were Here. Jack is Professor of English at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois, a seventh-generation Iowan, and a member of the board of directors for the Midwestern History Association.
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