The appearance of A New Home--Who'll Follow" in 1839 caused, in the words of Edgar Allan Poe, "an undoubted sensation." Written by an actual western settler, this collection of wilderness sketches by Caroline M. Kirkland was as bold and uncompromising as the frontier it described. The book was a popular and a critical success, and reviewers praised Kirkland's realistic depictions, which, they noted, were rare during a time when sentimental fluff was all too common in popular fiction. Even in its own day, A New Home seemed to be something out of the ordinary. Yet it is only in retrospect that Kirkland's real contribution to American letters can be fully appreciated, for this eastern migrant to the West was a literary as well as a literal pioneer. In an age which condoned the imaginative excesses of popular romancers and adventure-tale hacks, Kirkland insisted on the presentation of "actual reality...