I'll begin with a caveat: other than American Gothic I had never known any of Grant Wood's work (in fact, confusing him with Norman Rockwell), nor had any particular interest in him or art history. From this biography, he seems like a generous, caring person. Based on the written descriptions, I'm not sure the reproductions included are accurate or of a high enough quality to give an accurate idea of whether or not I'd appreciate his work. For example, "Indian Summer"is described as warm gold, red and orange with bright blue sky but is printed quite pale. And on "Spring in Town" he says he painted every blade of grass, but the effect in the reproduced print is more of a random pointilism.
I'm impressed at the variety of positions Grant Wood held, especially given economy of the Great Depression. He seemed to have more of a vital role in the arts in Iowa than any artists of my acquaintance currently do in their towns. At some points the biography becomes merely a listing of the different artworks Grant was producing, likely because his sister Nan had moved out of town by then and had fewer anecdotes to recount. I particularly enjoyed reading about some of his innovations when he remodeled different buildings for living quarters, and the ways his family had to make do in order to survive in the Depression.
I picked up this book wanting to read something more by Julie Jensen McDonald to decide if the collection of story excerpts I had recently read was an adequate representation of her writing. This was the only work by her in my local library, but given her role as more of an editor I think my question is still unanswered. I can only imagine the difficulty in trying to make something readable out of the manuscript by Grant's sister, Nan Wood Graham, which after 5 years of editing by John Zug is described as "deadly prose". The introduction by Graham lets us know that she wants to present Grant as she knew him, which implies that she would retain rigid control over the content. I hope it was her desire rather than McDonald's decision to include the boring listing of current and subsequent owners of each piece of art which is mentioned.
The book includes a chronology of Grant Woods' life and a paged listing of "unidentified" illustrations at the front, and ends with an index. The list of illustrations would have been improved if it had also included the pages of the titled illustrations. As I read about a particular artwork I would have wanted to turn to see it but had to fumble to try to find it. Then I finished the book & discovered a very thorough index. ( )