The Elk in the Glade

Publishers Weekly Editor’s Pick! BookFest Award-Winning Selection

2023 Second Place in BookFest Awards for Contemporary Poetry

2023 Finalist in American BookFest Best Book Awards for Narrative Poetry

"Bruce E. Whitacre's ability to capture this support network and the extraordinary efforts of Jennie Hicks in a manner that reaches beyond the usual literary or arts reader makes her story appealing to a much wider audience.” — Diane Donovan, The Midwest Book Review.

“Side by side with the paintings, Whitacre’s book serves as a deeply personal yet relatable account of one woman’s life and turn-of-the-century lifestyle—and clearly demonstrates why this talented painter and pioneer stands as someone to remember.”

"A lovely and loving celebration of his remarkable great grandmother, Jennie Hicks's, life and art, and an inspiring example of how a woman's artistic discipline gave her the courage and insight to transcend the hardships of the Nebraska frontier." Ladette Randolph, Editor in Chief, Ploughshares

Based on personal memories and family oral history, Whitacre’s debut collection of sixteen poems traces the life and legacy of a family matriarch, his great grandmother, Jennie Hicks. The daughter of American pioneers, she marries a successful farmer, bearing him three girls, seeing them all married, only to outlive him and the farm.  Once again alone and facing hardship, she transforms an almost forgotten hobby, her young girl dream, into a brilliant thirty-year career as a successful landscape painter, the future pride of her hometown, Farnam, Nebraska, and an important figure in American art.  Lovers of American history, art, and strong female characters will enjoy these lyric chronicles.