E. W. Howe's importance in the development of American realism rests on his first and best book, The Story of a Country Town (1883). Howe's autobiographical novel, depicting midwestern drabness and neurotic failure, anticipates the early work of Hamlin Garland (which with the writings of Harold Frederic, Stephen Crane, and Frank Norris paved the way for Theodore Dreiser). S. J. Sackett suggests in his critical study, E. W. Howe (1972), that Howe's early lessons in survival and his awareness of Charles Darwin and Emile Zola led him toward determinism. Because eastern publishers initially rejected his manuscript, Howe first printed The Story of a Country Town in his Atchison Globe newspaper shop. During the 1880s and 1890s Howe, a hardworking country newspaper editor, wrote five more novels, all inferior to the deeply experienced Story of a Country Town. Many readers have called it the great American novel, and newspapers all over...