Iowa and Edna Ferber: The Origins Of ‘The Northeast Quarter’
In my debut novel, The Northeast Quarter (Wheatmark, November 15, 2016) I tell the story of Ann Hardy, 10 years old at the beginning of the book, who overcomes 12 years of betrayal, banishment, even physical violence, to mature into a smart young female lawyer, who struggles to retain rights to her family’s richest piece of land, “The Northeast Quarter.” The story is loosely based on gossip I heard as a child between his mother and her cousins about family property in rural Iowa. When I began The Northeast Quarter, my goal at the time was to write a play which resembled an Edna Ferber-type novel and set it in Iowa. I had always liked Ferber’s novels for their sweep…