Lingering Inland: How Midwest Stories, Memory, and Place Shape the American Soul

The Midwest has always been misunderstood. Reduced to flyover shorthand or nostalgic caricature, it’s often treated as a blank space between coasts. But in Lingering Inland, editor Andy Oler and a chorus of contemporary writers prove that the heartland is anything but empty. It’s crowded with memory, contradiction, grit, and quiet beauty, if you know how to listen.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Tom Barnas and Oler dig into the idea that place is not just where stories happen, but why they happen. Their discussion circles around a deceptively simple question: how do the stories we tell about Midwestern places shape who we are, and how do our lived experiences reshape those stories in return?

Oler’s Literary Landscapes project gathers 73 original short essays, each rooted in a physical location that has echoed through Midwestern literature. From the legacy of Toni Morrison to the enduring presence of Willa Cather, contributors return to these sites not as tourists, but as pilgrims. They linger. They listen. They let the land speak back.

What emerges is a portrait of the Midwest that resists mythmaking while embracing meaning. These essays wrestle with masculinity and memory, with nostalgia sharpened by honesty, and with the resilience of communities that endure not because they are loud, but because they are stubbornly alive. Grain elevators, small towns, neighborhoods, and back roads become emotional coordinates, mapping longing as much as geography.

There’s a particular pride here, one that doesn’t announce itself. Oler emphasizes the beauty found in ordinary places, the kind you pass every day until someone teaches you how to see it. This is literature that understands the Midwest as a lived-in space, shaped by labor, weather, inheritance, and hope.

Lingering Inland stands as a singular work of creative nonfiction, binding personal reflection to collective identity. It reminds us that regional literature matters most to the people who call that region home, not as a mirror of stereotypes, but as a record of survival and imagination. Beyond the clichés, beyond the punchlines, the Midwest emerges as a landscape of interior lives, still unfolding, still worth lingering over.

For more Stories From The 78, follow @tombarnas78 on Instagram and @storiesfromthe78 on TikTok.