The Life and Death of Barrett, Kansas focuses on the changing fortunes of both the small village of Barrett, Kansas and the Reb family—widow Anna and her six children. They form the nucleus of a cast of real-life characters including a security guard at the Chicago World’s Fair; a woman who mastered printing glass plate negatives using a horse trough; a wife unafraid to express her sexual attraction for her husband; and a brother who bought an organ for his fragile, sickly sister because of her love of music.

The book is based largely on an abundance of carefully saved letters written by family members and their friends. The letters cover the period roughly from what the U.S. Census Bureau considered the end of the frontier in 1890 through World War I, the Great Depression, World War II and into the 1950s as Barrett is condemned to make way for a dam reservoir and the family members die. Along with the letters, I have researched other primary sources from the time period—census records, newspapers, even old movies—to convey what life was like in rural America over one hundred years ago. 

I was inspired to write the book not only by the family letters but by a visit to a lonely marker, pictured on the cover, which stands almost hidden amid an overgrowth of bushes, almost all that remains of the once lively community of Barrett. I thought of all the people whom I had come to know through reading the letters and wanted to give them a voice. I hope you will enjoy immersing yourself in this lost world, as I certainly did, while gaining insight into our past.