Books: Prairie Obit

THE NARROW COVERING (214 pp.)—Julia Siebel—Harcourt, Brace ($3.50).

Take away unhappy childhoods and a seething contempt for the old hometown and many a U.S. writer might never have set pen to paper. Still, rebels like Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson and Theodore Dreiser were moved at least as much by compassion for their Midwestern farmers and townsfolk as they were by a kind of rage because life was not more beautiful. Their kind of literary rebellion is as dated today as the harsh, shallow life they raged against. That is what makes The Narrow Covering, a first novel by Kansas-born Julia Siebel, as...

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