Review
Writers pegged as "regional" are a lot like character actors: both can become wedged so tightly into one hole they can never be taken seriously elsewhere. Of course, this isn't always a negative. Faulkner is largely considered a regional novelist, a Nobel laureate who created a whole oeuvre built around a mythical world known as Yoknapatawpha, based on the area surrounding his native Oxford, Mississippi. Likewise, most of Daniel Woodrell's stories are set in his native land: the Ozarks, a little Appalachia-esque microcosm plunked down in southeastern Missouri, where the author grew up and chose to stay.
The stories collected in
The Outlaw Album are diverse in plot but unified by several themes, the most pervasive being the often twisted nature of family relationships and the horrible after effects of war, the indelible stamp it leaves on the psyche of those...
Beyond the Book
The region known as "The Ozarks" sprawls across southern Missouri as well as parts of northwestern and north central Arkansas, spilling over into Oklahoma and a small corner of Kansas. In area it's about the size of the state of Tennessee, in topography it's similar to the Appalachian region with rolling hills, plateaus (e.g. the Springfield and Salem Plateau regions), and rougher, mountainous terrain in the Saint Francois and Boston Mountain ranges. Referred to as the "American Highlands," it features hundreds of caves, springs, and natural arches, some of which are protected as a part of the Ozark National Scenic Riverways National Park.
