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For those who have followed the career of psychoanalyst Thomas H. Ogden, it will come as no surprise that he has published a novel. Its subject, though, may offer a bit of a shock: violent death in the wheat fields of Kansas. Ogden, who makes frequent reference in his psychoanalytic writings to works of literature (most often to poetry), takes a leap in another direction in his debut novel, which explores the inner and outer lives of a woman who harasses her thumb-sucking preadolescent son, her husband who (intentionally or unintentionally) kills her, and their two intelligently bewildered children.
The novel begins with a false sense of calm, reminiscent of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. Ogden writes:
The road out to the Bronfman farm in late August is no different from thousands of other roads to grain farms in Kansas - hard-baked dirt dusted with a fine powder of yellow clay that shifts almost imperceptibly with the slightest movement of the air.