The Lost Frontier

This exploration of Annie Proulx’s Western fiction places her work firmly within multiple contexts, demonstrating the depth of Proulx’s commitment to her adopted Western landscape. In The Lost Frontier , Asquith specifically examines Proulx’s short story collection trilogy – Close Range: Wyoming Stories (1999); Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories (2004); and Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories (2008), stories written after her physical move West to Wyoming in 1995. While acknowledging the differences in the three collections, Asquith chooses to focus on the continuities of the stories as a body, in the creation of a contemporary portrait of this Western state. Within chapters “Landscape,” “Pioneers,” “Ranchers,” “Cowboys,” “Indians,” and “Losers,” Asquith examines Wyoming Stories ’ relationship to these key elements of Western literature. To support his reading of Proulx’s portrayal of these elements, Asquith then presents close readings of three to four stories in each chapter, although not necessarily one from each collection – again, encouraging the reading of these stories across the volume divisions

Archaeology · Art history · Cartography · Dirt · Frontier · Geography · Linguistics · Portrait · Reading (process · Trilogy · American Environmental and Regional History · Archaeology and Natural History · Canadian Identity and History · History · Philosophy