Between the Rockies and a Hard Place
Between the Rockies and a Hard Place
A Drive Along the 100th Meridian from Mexico to Canada
About the Book
When a European sets off to ‘discover’ America, you know what to expect: a coast-to-coast trip comparing New York with California, sprinkled with a few offhand remarks about the fly-over states. British writer Alan Wilkinson takes a different tack, making for Laredo, Texas, and turning north along the Hundredth Meridian. His aim? To explore the line that divides two Great Plains cultures of cattle and corn. Sod-buster to the east, cowboy to the west.
Between the Rockies and a Hard Place runs slap-bang through the geographical centre of the nation, from Mexico to the Canadian line, with barely a stop-light in 2,700 miles. It’s a journey across vast empty spaces, through the lands settled little more than a century ago; a country of big skies, dusty trails, and one-horse towns where there are more names in the cemetery than in the phone-book. It’s a place where the past overshadows everything, where the tide of western progress left its human jetsam to face the elements.
Author: Alan Wilkinson
263 pages (Paperback)
