A fine and very satisfying collection of stories with a strong sense of place (southern Minnesota) and the people who inhabit it. Meyers' stories represent the narrative tradition found in "Winesburg, Ohio" and "The Spoon River Anthology." He has a gift for capturing the way rural Midwesterners speak, and each of the stories is a dramatic monologue in a distinctly different voice. He also has a remarkable ability to evoke in words the experience of physical sensations -- qualities of air and movement, nuances of deeply felt emotion and memory.

There are frequent references to the topography of the land and the traces left behind of geological ages past. This awareness of prehistory and the cycles of seasons, migratory birds, and extremes of weather, frame the lives of characters who live and work in rural communities and on family farms. A young man is struck by lightning while operating a combine. A crew boss at a corn processing plant must deflect the mounting rage of an itinerant employee. A young woman struggles with her father to hang onto a farm he no longer wants. A young farmer restores a section of his cornfields to wetlands, so geese will stop again on their seasonal flights. Two bored teenagers invent a death-defying game played out nightly on country roads.

Although often haunted by isolation, loss, and regret, these are richly experienced lives, lived by people reminded daily of their vulnerability by the vast, open land around them and their dependence on one another.

If you, like me, grew up on a "real" farm in the Upper Midwest, this book will take you back to the sights, sounds, smells and memories of your childhood. You'll smile, nod your head in agreement, and sometimes even cry. You'll read paragraphs aloud to your wife who did not grow up on farm, and she'll say "that's nice" but not quite get it. If you did not grow up on a farm, and would like a better understanding of farm boys, this is a must read. I'll read it again.

A friend of mine recommended this book. I grew up on a farm in central Nebraska. When I finished reading this book, I called my mom and asked her if I had a brother named Kent that she never told me about. I started reading her excerpts from the book and we were both astounded by how closely it matched our own lives on the farm in Nebraska, including the blue-speckled canning pot and pressure cooker sitting on the stove all summer! I found particular delight in the essay on the work of "town kids" vs. "farm kids." I look back at all we did, but it never seemed like work. It was just our life, one I wouldn't trade for anything. Like the author, I've been through my father's death, the sale of the farm, and in the next few weeks my mother will be moving off the farm and into town. Loved this book!

_A Witness of Combines_ was difficult for me to read. Kent Meyers so perfectly captures what it was like for me to grow up on a north central Iowa farm, that it feels like he was one of the neighbors. The final chapter about returning home is unbearably vivid. I, too, am off the farm because of governmental policies and their effects on farming. If you want to know what it was like, and why we ought to try to preserve it, read this book.

If I ever write this well, I shall be well-pleased.

Using the voice of various citizens of a small Minnesota town, Kent Meyers tells the story behind a tragic act.

Two-Speed Crandall crashes his semi through town, killing himself and his doomed wife and cutting a pointed path of destruction. Though no one in town claims to really know Two-Speed (even his own son), they fumble with their collective knowledge of this man and his past behavior in attempt to understand his final act.

The reader begins the book hoping to learn more about Two-Speed Crandall's life, but instead, we are shown the inner-workings of a small community and how intertwined their lives are. Each voice is distinct and each character well-defined through his/her own thoughts as relayed to the reader.

What's so fantastic about this book is how the author nails each character, makes them unique, quirky, yet solid. In the end, there are no unanswered questions, just acceptance.

When Two-Speed Crandall crashes his pick-up in the middle of town, killing himself, his wife, and a load of cattle, his surviving family and townspeople speculate as to whether the crash was voluntary, and what led up to it.

This story is told through various persons' thoughts and observations: family members, the only person who witnessed the crash, the local gossip, and others. Each one has separate pieces to the puzzle, so the book made me think of the old story about three blind men trying to describe an elephant, each feeling a totally different part.

The writing is brilliant. You feel like you "know" each of the narrators. At the same time, these differing perspectives result in the development of complex characters. For example, Two-Speed, who generally is a jerk to most people, at the same time secretly befriends a local mentally retarded man in a truly kind way.

The writing also was so clear that I vividly "saw" the town of Cloten, the fields, the river and the events as they unfolded.

I understand that this is the author's first novel, and hope that there are more to come.

Ordinary folks inhabiting any small town in rural America are the multifaceted characters plying the pages of "The River Warren". At the same time the insights brought to the reader through these people living on the fringe of our culture are rather extraordinary. The story is set in motion by Tow-speed Crandall who crashes his tractor trailer loaded with cattle through the streets of a quite Minnesota hamlet, killing driver, passenger and most of the cattle on board. The main characters of the book are connected to the dead occupants in interesting and surprizing ways that are revealed layer by layer as the story unfolds. Every chapter's title is the name of the person speaking, each character offering a varied perspective of the commings and goings of Two-Speed and his truck. Using this interesting literary device Kent Myers gives his story solid form, a backbone so to say. Still the pros are as fluid and varied as the person doing the talking. By design the town(the community) comes to know itself a little better, and I might add, so does the reader. Myers infuses the story line with an undertow tension, a mysterious ebb and flow, not unlike the River Warren itself. At novel's end, we are sitting with people much like ourselves, men and women of light and shadow, maybe a little rough around the edges, all in need of some form of redemption. The author does not disappoint in this regard, transforming his characters and readers in subtle, lasting ways. A fine piece of work that easily warrents its place on the printed page, no doubt worthy of further reflection and much more praise than I am able to give here.