Until we get to know them, the characters in [Plains Song] are about as flat as their setting. The first generation settlers in particular seem "less persons than pieces of nature, closely related to cows and chickens."…

To Sharon Rose, the first woman in the family to flee to Chicago for a wider life, this world comes to represent an incredible oppression…. To the characters who stay, it is a world entirely self-contained and self-sufficient, in which endless unfinished chores provide meaning for existence.

Wright Morris … refuses to take sides or allow one of the voices in Plains Song to outsing another. As the point of view subtly shifts from character to character, so does Morris's compassion. Each person is sketched with absolute honesty.

As is the setting. Morris's middle western plains—an unchanging panorama of weeds, grasshoppers, grainfields, silences, and heat-drugged flies—are brought to life with...