SOURCE: Pierce, Carol J. “Dairy Farm Tragedy.” English Journal 85, no. 5 (September 1996): 109-10.

In the following review, Pierce highlights the realistic portrayal of daily life on Midwestern farms for women in A Map of the World, drawing thematic and character comparisons to classical tragedy.

Books take us to lands and times we can only imagine and let us encounter characters who people a culture or an era much different from our own. This is a message we impress on our students daily. However, lately, it seems more of us are interested in the people and places of what we term the “real world.”

The recent popularity and exploding fame of Robert Waller's The Bridges of Madison County let those of us in Iowa know that people out there want to glimpse what life is like on a rural farm. But the life of lonely Francesca Johnson is not the...