Main-Travelled Roads collects 11 short stories, originally published in 1891, set in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, or what Hamlin Garland called the “Middle Border.” Depicting an agrarian life of exploitation, misogyny, and poverty, Garland's radical, realist stories refute romantic conceptions of the rural Midwest. Unrelenting yet strangely hopeful in its view of how things ought to be, this collection is gripping, hard-hitting, and surprisingly beautiful.