My Books

Adventures in the West: Stories for Young Readers
Susanne George Bloomfield and Eric Melvin Reed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007.
Before MP3 players, DVDs, and video games, before even TV and radio, American children entertained themselves by reading. Often what they read were popular magazines aimed at the whole family; a weekly newspaper such as The Youth’s Companion or a monthly magazine like St. Nicholas were about all a turn-of-the-century family could afford. But what these publications afforded was invaluable, and it is this education in imagination and American life that Adventures in the West revisits.

Adventures in the West brings together twenty-six stories from The Youth’s Companion and St. Nicholas to offer a unique perspective on the values of the time. The stories also reveal the common myths, attitudes, and prejudices of life on the western frontier, reflected in the lessons these publications imparted to a young audience. To enhance the reader’s understanding, the editors have added historical and cultural background for each story. Some of the best writers of the time, including L. Frank Baum, Hamlin Garland, and Mary Austin, write of a West that mirrors American history and the values the authors sought to promote. Filled with the exploits of cowpunchers, pioneers, courageous Indians, and plucky animals, these riveting stories also embody the beliefs and experiences of an era and tell more than one story of their day.

From the Beginning: A Century of Excellence at the University of Nebraska at Kearney
Susanne George Bloomfield and Eric Melvin Reed. Kearney: University of Nebraska -Kearney, 2005.
From the Beginning 1905-2005: A Century of Excellence, University of Nebraska-Kearney recounts the stages of growth of the university from its beginning as Nebraska State Normal school in 1905 to Nebraska State Teachers College in 1921, Kearney Sate College in 1963, and finally the University of Nebraska-Kearney in 1991. In addition to a timeline for each period, every chapter contains archival photographs and images that add a visual element to the history of the institution. In addition, one hundred notable people are highlighted in each chapter, including George Arnold, the first night watchman and head custodian for thirty-five years, George Van Buren, who coached every major sport at the normal school and leading several teams to championships, Patsy Hamer, the first “Gridiron Queen” in 1935, Halver Niels Christensen, who received the first Distinguished Alumni Award for his groundbreaking work in pathology, and Curtis Harry, the first UNK althlete to participate in the Olympics.

Impertinences: Selected Writings of Elia Peattie, A Journalist in the Gilded Age
Edited and with a Biography by Susanne George Bloomfield. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005.
Impertinences: Selected Writings of Elia Peattie, winner of the national WILLA Award and the Nebraska Book Award for nonfiction, is a collection of articles, editorials, and narratives by Elia Peattie written during her tenure at the Omaha World-Herald from 1888 to 1896, richly illustrated with photographs from the period. Elia (Wilkinson) Peattie (1862–1935) was born during the Civil War and came of age at the advent of the era of the New Woman. In many ways Peattie embodied this new age of independence for women, writing both fiction and journalism and becoming one of the first Plains women to write editorial columns in a major newspaper that addressed public issues.

Not shy with her opinions about current events in the state of Nebraska in the late nineteenth century, Peattie tackled subjects such as the Wounded Knee Massacre, capital punishment and lynchings, prostitution, the Omaha stockyards, beet-field workers in Grand Island, schools and child rearing, the need for orphanages, shelters for unwed mothers, charity hospitals, and the New Woman.

Editor Susanne George Bloomfield includes a biography of Peattie, who is described as “tall, dignified, and kindly, and possessing a wicked sense of humor.” Peattie’s work now stands as a rare and valuable history of Nebraska, showing us a lively frontier society through the eyes of a woman engaged in the life of her community and her own struggle to balance her family and career.

A Prairie Mosaic: An Atlas of Central Nebraska’s Land, Nature, and Culture
Eds. Steve Rothenberger and Susanne George-Bloomfield. Kearney: University of Nebraska-Kearney, 2000.
A Prairie Mosaic is an interdisciplinary collection of thirty articles centering on the theme of the natural and cultural world of the prairie in central Nebraska written by faculty of the University of Nebraska-Kearney. The chapters include Geography/Climate/Biology, History/Law, Art/Culture, and Economics/Politics/Society, each illustrated with photographs, maps, graphs, and images. In addition to the informative articles, each chapter title page offers reproductions of art from the Museum of Nebraska art and poetry from UNK professors. In addition to being co-editor, Dr. Bloomfield contributed the articles “Solomon Butcher” and “The Happiness and the Curse: Literary Views of the Nebraska Prairie” and the poem “Farm Wife.”

Kate M. Cleary: A Literary Biography with Selected Works
Susanne K. George. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.
The winner of 1998 Susan Koppelman Award, sponsored by the Popular Culture Association and the American Culture Association, Kate M. Cleary: A Literary Biography with Selected Works is a biography of the young woman who moved from Chicago to Hubbell, Nebraska, where she bore six children and helped support her family by publishing hundreds of stories, poems, and articles. After her return to Chicago in 1898, Cleary continued to write stories about the American West. Susanne K. George’s absorbing account recovers the life and works of a fascinating western American author. She vividly portrays Cleary’s arduous decade and a half on the frontier and her last, tragic years in Chicago, where she died in 1905, at the age of forty-two. George also describes how Cleary’s career reflects the difficulties faced by women authors at the end of the nineteenth century and the unique perspectives that such women brought to the art of fiction.

The second part of the book is a collection of Cleary’s writings. Some of the eighteen short stories, essays, and sketches are somber, even grim, depictions of homestead and small-town life in Nebraska, with special emphasis placed on the experiences of women. Others are humorous, ironic accounts of life on the western frontier. Also included are samplings of Cleary’s verse.

The Platte River: An Atlas of the Big Bend Region
Eds. Allan Jenkins and Susanne K. George. Kearney:University of Nebraska-Kearney, 1993.
A multidisciplinary collection of articles by professors at the University of Nebraska-Kearney, The Platte River consists of beautifully illustrated articles on the roles that water has played on the development of central Nebraska. Maps, charts, graphs, and archival images add visual interest to the articles. Each of the four chapters– Geography/Climate/Biology, History/Literature,/Art, Economics/Agriculture/Demography, and Water/Law People–is introduced with art from the Museum of Nebraska Art and a poem by Donovan Welch. Throughout the atlas are interspersed poems by Nebraska poets. In addition to co-editing the atlas, Dr. Bloomfield contributed articles on “Country School Legacy” and “Platte River Writers: Literature of the Big Bend Region” and a poem “Empty Pockets.”

The Adventures of The Woman Homesteader: The Life and Letters of Elinore Pruitt Stewart
Susanne K. George. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992.

Generations of readers have delighted in Elinore Pruitt Stewart’s Letters of a Woman Homesteader (1914) and Letters on an Elk Hunt (1915), among the most engaging accounts of life in the American West. Stewart related her adventures on an isolated Wyoming homestead with such vividness, gusto, and sympathy that she has become the woman homesteader. Until now, however, little has been known about her except what she chose to reveal in her published letters.

Old friends and new acquaintances alike will welcome this book combining Stewart’s previously unpublished or uncollected letters with Susanne K. George’s extensive research. Here is as full and candid a portrait as we are ever likely to have of The Woman Homesteader: the illness, disappointments, and grinding hard work that lay behind her genial public persona; the family, neighbors, and correspondents who peopled her letter-stories and shared her life. George has discovered in Elinore Pruitt Stewart a story fully as rewarding as any told by the Woman Homesteader herself. In an afterword George considers Stewart’s use of fictional devices and her growth as a writer as well as her place in American letters.

“Absolutely No Manners: On Having the Audacity to Write Biography
Monograph. Lincoln, NE: Mari Sandoz Heritage Society and the Center for Great Plains Studies, 2003.
(The full text of this monograph is available in the tab “Writing Biography with permission of the publishers.)

A Presidential Visit
Eds. Susanne George-Bloomfield and Steve Rothenberger. Kearney: University of Nebraska-Kearney, 2002.

Wellsprings: Poems by Six Nebraska Poets
Ed. Susanne K. George. Kearney: University of Nebraska-Kearney, 1995.

BOOK AWARDS

2009 Finalist, New Mexico Book Awards for Adventures in the West.

2006 Winner, Nebraska Book Awards for Nonfiction for Impertinences: Selected Editorials of Elia W. Peattie, A Journalist in the Gilded Age. [Nebraska Center for the Book].

2006 Winner, WILLA Literary Award for Nonfiction for Impertinences: Selected Editorials of Elia W. Peattie, A Journalist in the Gilded Age. [Women Writing the West Association].

2000 Top 25 List, Library Journal’s Notable Document List for The Prairie Mosaic. (Top 25 works for 2000–nine states represented; eleven international)

1998 Winner, Susan Koppelman Award for Kate M. Cleary: A Literary Biography with Selected Works. [Women’s Caucus of the Popular Culture Association, American Culture Association, National Women’s Studies Association]

1998 Finalist, Biography Award for Kate M. Cleary: A Literary Biography with Selected Works, Society of Midland Authors. [Formerly Chicago Cliff Dwellers Club]

SELECTED REVIEWS OF PUBLISHED BOOKS
Selected Reviews of Impertinences

Downs, C. Rev. of Impertinences: Selected Writings of Elia Peattie, A Journalist in the Gilded Age. American Literary Realism 39.2 (Winter 2007).
Lauters, Amy Mattson. Rev. of Impertinences: Selected Writings of Elia Peattie, A Journalist in the Gilded Age. American Journalism (Summer 2005).
Loomis, L. Rev. of Impertinences: Selected Writings of Elia Peattie, A Journalist in the Gilded Age. Choice (December 2005).
Wolfe, Peter. Rev. of Impertinences: Selected Writings of Elia Peattie, A Journalist in the Gilded Age. Nebraska History 86.4 (Winter 2005): 152.
Boylan, James.Rev. of Impertinences: Selected Writings of Elia Peattie, A Journalist in the Gilded Age. Columbia Journalism Review (July/August 2005).
Rev. of Impertinences: Selected Writings of Elia Peattie, A Journalist in the Gilded Age. Roundup Magazine 12.6 (August 2005).
Rev. of Impertinences: Selected Writings of Elia Peattie, A Journalist in the Gilded Age. Great Plains Quarterly 25/3 (Summer 2005).
Rev. of Impertinences: Selected Writings of Elia Peattie, A Journalist in the Gilded Age. Nebraska Life. 10.2 (March/April 2006): 53-54.

Selected Reviews of Prairie Mosaic

Snyder, Vicki. ” Rev. of A Prairie Mosaic: An Atlas of Central Nebraska’s Land, Culture, and Nature.” Grassroots Nebraska December 2000: 4.
“Kearney Writers Did Themselves Proud.” Rev. of A Prairie Mosaic. Omaha World-Herald 28 December 2000:12.

Selected Reviews of Kate M. Cleary

Aronson, Marilyn A. Carlson. Rev. of Kate M. Cleary: A Literary Biography with Selected Works. Nebraska History 78.4 (Winter 1997):206.
Berndt, Michael D. Rev. of Kate M. Cleary: A Literary Biography with Selected Works. Western American Literature 32.4 (February 1998): 401-402.
Keetley, Dawn. Rev. of Kate M. Cleary: A Literary Biography with Selected Works. Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 16.2 (1999):206.

Selected Reviews of Adventures of the Woman Homesteader

Billesbach, Ann. Rev. of The Adventures of the Woman Homesteader: The Life and Letters of Elinore Pruitt Stewart. Nebraska History 74.2 (Summer 1993).
Graulich, Melody. Rev. of The Adventures of the Woman Homesteader: The Life and Letters of Elinore Pruitt Stewart. Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 11.2 (1994): 174.
Hart, Sue. Rev. of The Adventures of the Woman Homesteader: The Life and Letters of Elinore Pruitt Stewart. Great Plains Quarterly 14.1 (1994).
Kirschke, James J. Rev. of The Adventures of the Woman Homesteader: The Life and Letters of Elinore Pruitt Stewart. Western American Literature 28.3. (1993).
Peterson, Catherine. Rev. of The Adventures of the Woman Homesteader: The Life and Letters of Elinore Pruitt Stewart. English Westerners (United Kingdom) (Summer 1994).