Elizabeth Strout is the Pulitzer prize winning author of 'Olive Kitteridge', which was also turned into an Emmy winning HBO drama.  Many people believe that no one, at present writes about the other America as well as she does.  Her work is about the kind of isolated, small town America in the interiors.  These are the type of places where you got a hardware store, a humble little cafe, a gas station and if you're lucky, a salon, and that's about it.  Their tiny houses and vast expanses of corn fields.  You get the sense that the sheer ennui of the place is going to choke you.  Places such as Amgash and Carlisle in Illinois or Hannibal in Missouri.