A Son of the Middle Border

The frontier wasn't a destination; it was a fever that consumed everything in its path.In the wake of the Civil War, a young boy follows his father's obsession across the unplowed prairies of the Upper Midwest. From the woods of Wisconsin to the frozen plains of Dakota, the promise of golden wheat drives the family deeper into the wild. For the father, it is a pioneer's dream; for the son, it is a life sentence of bone-deep labor and deafening isolation.Yet the soil cannot bury a hunger for the mind. As the harsh winters of the "Middle Border" set in, the physical toll of the plow clashes with the call of the written word. While his father chases the sunset, the son realizes the frontier is not a promised land, but a cage of mud and stone.As the East beckons, he must choose between loyalty to his kin and the intellectual life he was born to lead. When the frontier closes, what is the ultimate cost of leaving your roots behind? Can a son of the border ever truly escape the shadow of the plow?