The Troll Garden, and Selected Stories

In Short

This collection brings together poignant short stories that explore the lives of people living on the rugged Nebraska frontier and those navigating the complex, often disillusioning world of high art and performance. Whether set in a desolate prairie shanty or a bustling New York concert hall, these narratives examine the desperate human search for meaning, connection, and grace. Celebrated for their psychological depth and lyrical precision, these tales have endured because they speak to the universal, often painful conflict between the realities we inherit and the dreams we invent to survive.

The Story

The collection opens on the Nebraska Divide, where the vast, wind-swept prairie acts as both a cradle and a prison. In "On the Divide," we meet Canute, a man hardened by isolation and the brutal demands of homesteading, whose only escape is the fragile, secret world he builds for himself. This theme of emotional starvation continues in "Eric Hermannson’s Soul," where a young man caught in the fervor of a religious revival struggles to reconcile his wild, natural spirit—embodied by his fiddle-playing—with the suffocating expectations of his community and the allure of a sophisticated woman from the East.

The scope expands to include the lives of artists and those who orbit them. "The Sculptor’s Funeral" depicts the jarring return of a renowned artist’s body to his small, narrow-minded hometown, where his sophisticated past is met with resentment and misunderstanding. In "A Death in the Desert," a dying woman finds a final, fleeting connection with the brother of the man who once loved her, highlighting the transient nature of fame and the heavy cost of living for art. "The Marriage of Phaedra" explores the obsession surrounding a great painter’s final, unfinished work, while "A Wagner Matinee" portrays an elderly woman, long ago worn thin by the relentless labor of the frontier, who is briefly jolted back to life by the music she once cherished in her youth.

The collection reaches its most tragic intensity in "Paul’s Case." Paul is a young man living in a claustrophobic, unimaginative neighborhood, obsessed with the grandeur and comfort of the theater world. He steals money to finance a brief, glittering escape to New York, living the high life he believes he was meant for. But the reality of his deception and the inevitability of his return to the "sawdust" of his former existence become unbearable. As the law closes in, Paul realizes that his rebellion was a "losing game." In his final moments, while standing in the snow, he reflects on the beauty he glimpsed, feeling the "folly of his haste" before choosing a desperate, final exit. Throughout the book, characters like Clara Vavrika in "The Bohemian Girl" attempt to bridge these worlds, dancing between the demands of local tradition and the freedom of a wider life, creating a "legend" of their own in the face of inevitable judgment.

How It Unfolds

The prairie roots Stories like "On the Divide" establish the physical and psychological landscape, where the relentless wind and isolation force individuals to retreat into internal worlds. The prose lingers on the harshness of the environment, showing how the land shapes the soul long before any outside influence arrives.

The call of the exotic Characters suddenly encounter beauty—a song, a traveler, or a piece of music—that exposes the poverty of their current existence. This moment of recognition acts as a catalyst, pulling the protagonist away from their duties and toward an unreachable, often dangerous ideal.

The collision of worlds The narrative shifts to the inevitable clash between these dreamers and the "homilies by which the world is run." Whether it is a funeral in a cramped parlor or a stolen week in a luxury hotel, the friction between art and convention creates a mounting, unbearable tension.

The final reckoning The arc concludes with the realization that such beauty is often fleeting and costly. The characters are forced to choose between a life of quiet, dull acceptance or a brief, catastrophic brush with the sublime, leaving them either permanently altered or effectively destroyed by their desires.

The People

Canute is a man of the soil, marked by the physical brutality of the frontier, who hides a sensitive, imaginative interior behind a facade of rugged indifference. Eric Hermannson, similarly bound by the land, is torn between the religious "Light" of his neighbors and the artistic "soul" he fears he has bartered away for a dance.

Katharine Gaylord represents the artist’s sacrifice; she is a woman whose potential has been "spent" by the demands of a life lived for others, yet she remains a clear-sighted judge of the genius that exhausted her. Paul is perhaps the most desperate of all; he is a dreamer who lacks the tools to survive in a drab, conventional society. He wants everything at once and, finding no place for his refined tastes in his father's house, chooses to destroy himself rather than return to a life of "sawdust." Through them, we see the varied ways people grapple with the "atmosphere" they are assigned versus the one they crave.

In Its Own Voice

"If it had not been for the few stunted cottonwoods and elms that grew along its banks, Canute would have shot himself years ago."

This description of the desolate Nebraska landscape in "On the Divide" underscores how thin the margin is between survival and despair.

"She had seen the same feeling in other people, watched for it in her friends, studied it in the house night after night when he sang, candidly putting herself among a thousand others."

This reflection from "The Marriage of Phaedra" captures the collective, almost religious obsession people develop for a brilliant artist.

"It was only one splendid breath they had, in spite of their brave mockery at the winter outside the glass; and it was a losing game in the end, it seemed, this revolt against the homilies by which the world is run."

Paul’s final assessment in "Paul’s Case" summarizes the tragic, inevitable defeat of the dreamer in a rigid society.

What It's Really About

At its heart, this book interrogates the nature of "atmosphere"—that intangible feeling of belonging or beauty that people desperately seek. It asks whether one can truly escape the circumstances of their birth or if the pursuit of a "higher" life is merely a self-destructive fantasy. The stories function as a critique of the small-mindedness that stifles creativity and the coldness of a world that values stability over the intense, flickering light of human passion. It is an argument about the high price of imagination and the tragic, inevitable conflict between the internal life of the individual and the external demands of family, morality, and society.

Why Read It Today

Readers who appreciate sharp, unsentimental prose will find much to admire here. There is a profound honesty in how these stories handle the immigrant experience and the crushing weight of poverty, themes that remain as relevant today as they were in the early twentieth century. You will encounter the specific, sometimes jarring dialect of the Nebraska prairie and a mid-period literary style that values precision over flowery ornamentation.

While the stories can be emotionally taxing—there is a pervasive, melancholic sense of waste and longing—the experience of reading them is deeply rewarding. You will likely walk away thinking about the "runners" in the race of life and the way we construct our own "legends" to survive the monotony of the everyday. It is not a book for those seeking easy answers or happy endings; it is for the reader who wants to look directly at the tension between the dirt under our feet and the stars above our heads. The difficulty lies in the characters’ occasional lack of self-awareness, but that is precisely what makes them feel so human and vulnerable. If you have ever felt like a stranger in your own home, or if you have ever sacrificed everything for a moment of grace, these stories will stay with you.