The rolling, billowing, delicate landscape of Nebraska's Sandhills; the tombstone of Billy the Kid - stolen so often that it must be caged and shackled-in Fort Sumner, New Mexico; an intercontinental ballistic missile trundling down a highway, under heavy guard, in Weld County, Colorado; cottonwoods and prairie chickens, faded hotels and abandoned trailers painted aqua and purple; the ghosts of Pawnees, Cheyennes, and Kiowas and generations of settlers whose descendants now grouse in a caf in Heimdahl, North Dakota, or roar off to a bikers convention in Sturgis, South Dakota. These are some of the things that catch Merrill Gilfillan's eye and ear in this collection of essays amounting to a tour of the Great Plains - its geography and wildlife, history, mythology, and food, its vast spaces and weirdly synchronous time.