Round Hook, Nebraska
About the Novel
David Boles started his 1986 novel as an honors-level independent study course at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Dr. George Wolf served as his English Department faculty advisor for this ambitious project.
The fictional town of Round Hook takes its name from the geography of rural Nebraska, where roads curve around natural features and small communities develop at crossroads and creek bends. The name suggests both the physical landscape and the way places can hook us, holding us even as we try to leave.
The Honors Project
Writing a novel as an independent study represents an unusual academic undertaking. Unlike coursework with predetermined readings and assignments, the independent study places responsibility for scope and execution on the student, with the faculty advisor serving as guide and critic rather than instructor.
Dr. George Wolf's mentorship during this project exemplifies the best of undergraduate education: a senior scholar investing time in a student's creative development, providing the intellectual framework and critical feedback necessary for serious literary work. The first chapters preserved here document both the novel's beginning and an educational relationship.
Nebraska 1986
By 1986, Nebraska's farm crisis had reached its depths. Land values had collapsed, credit had dried up, and communities that had endured for a century faced extinction. Any novel set in rural Nebraska during this period, whether addressing the crisis directly or not, existed in its shadow. The economic catastrophe reshaped not just agriculture but the entire social fabric of the state.
Writing about Nebraska in 1986 meant confronting these realities or consciously looking away from them. Either choice carried meaning.