12 Gripping, Heartfelt, and Powerful Novels That Take Place in the American Midwest

Evelyn, Laura, and Grace are the glue that binds their family together. Tethered to their small Midwestern town and set three generations apart, we follow these women through social slights, heartbreaks, marital disappointments, infidelity, familial dysfunction, and mortality. A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl spans from World War II to the present, featuring women who regress, stall, and evolve over decades as they attempt to answer the burning question, “Can a woman serve her family and truly be free?”

Louise Erdrich transports readers to the Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota to tell the story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family. It is a powerful coming-of-age story, a mystery, and a moving novel of family, history, and culture.

Twenty-five-year-old Annie Clements spends the summer of 1913 the same way most women do in Calumet, Michigan: Sending their husbands and sons deep underground into dark coal mines each day while working in the homes of the elite, barely surviving off low wages. However, Annie quickly learns sticking up for herself and the town has mammoth consequences. In Annie’s hands lie the miners’ fortunes and their health, her husband’s wrath over her growing independence, and her own reputation as she faces the threat of prison and discovers a forbidden love. On her fierce quest for justice, Annie will discover just how much she is willing to sacrifice for her own independence and the families of Calumet.

Estranged sisters Ruth and June could not be more different. Since her husband’s sickness, Ruth has been single-handedly raising four young daughters and running her family’s Indiana farm. June is blonde and beautiful, married to a wealthy doctor, and living in a mansion in St. Paul, Indiana. However, this doesn’t make up for her lifelong desire for children while the man she used to love more than anything belongs to Ruth. Their mother Dorothy attempts to bring them together but may find it impossible as she attempts to manage her own dark secrets. The Sisters of Summit Avenue is a heartfelt love letter to mothers, daughters, and sisters everywhere.

Gilbert Grape is a twenty-four-year-old grocery clerk who dreams only of leaving Endora, Iowa. He lives with absent sisters and his grief-stricken mother. Once the town sweetheart, she now mourns her husband’s suicide by eating until the floor beneath her literally collapses. Gilbert can only find comfort in caring for his younger brother, Arnie. With the arrival of Arnie’s eighteenth birthday and a beautiful new girl in town who befriends him, Gilbert finds himself at a crossroads. Change is coming for him and his family, just not the way he anticipated.

A family is split when their father leaves their shared inheritance entirely to Helen, his younger daughter. As a result, she builds one of the most successful light breweries in the country, while Edith struggles to make ends meet. Edith has a heart as big as their home state of Minnesota, Helen’s is as rigid as a steel keg. Edith’s granddaughter, Diana, grows up knowing that the real world requires a tougher constitution than her grandmother possesses. She earns a shot at learning the IPA business from the ground up. Will that change their fortunes forever and perhaps reunite her splintered family?

Set over the course of a single evening, four former high school classmates converge on their hometown in northeastern Ohio. Passionate, drug-abusing young activist Bill Ashcraft returns to town with a mysterious package strapped to the undercarriage of his truck. Across town, Stacey Moore reluctantly confronts her family and the mother of her best friend and first love, searching for closure after his disappearance. Classmate and Iraqi veteran Dan Eaton goes on a date with the high school sweetheart he wishes he could forget, and beautiful-but-fragile Tina Ross reconnects with a washed-up high school football star. As the story evolves, these four separate stories come together as one. The joining of these narratives unearths dark secrets, revisiting old regrets and uncovering bitter betrayals.

A successful Iowa farmer decides to divide his farm between his three daughters. When the youngest objects, she is cut out of his will. This sets off a chain of events that brings dark truths to light and explodes long-suppressed emotions. An ambitious reimagining of Shakespeare’s King Lear cast in a typical American community in the late twentieth century, A Thousand Acres takes on similar themes of truth, justice, love, and pride, and reveals the beautiful yet treacherous topography of humanity.

Sanna Lund is content to live a simple, quiet life on her family’s apple orchard in Door County, Wisconsin, but that doesn’t seem possible when her single-minded brother attempts to convince their aging father to sell the land. He nearly succeeds until helpful and handsome single dad Isaac Banks arrives on the scene. Trying to shield his son Sebastian from his troubled mother, Isaac develops a deliciously complex relationship with Sanna. Sanna’s formerly simple life becomes increasingly complicated as an outside threat infiltrates the farm and tests the strength of each relationship.

Gillian Flynn, master of dark tales set in the Midwest, draws readers in with the tragic story of Libby Day, survivor of “The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.” She doesn’t dwell on the testimony she gave during her childhood that pinned the murder of her mother and two sisters on her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben. When a club of true crime-obsessed women reaches out to her, she realizes she may be able to turn a profit off her tragic history. She agrees to reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings to the club for a fee. Libby’s search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist towns and proves the truth might cost more than it’s worth.

Valerie Adler, epitome of fame and fortune working as the weathergirl at the local TV station, and Addie Downs, sole caretaker of her troubled brother and trying to meet Prince Charming on the Internet, were once best friends. Addie dismissed their friendship in the wake of betrayal during their teenage years as Valerie became popular and Addie became the class scapegoat. However, when Valerie shows up at Addie’s childhood home in Pleasant Ridge, Illinois, terrified and covered in blood, a domino of events ensues that argues “sandbox love never dies.” Best Friends Forever is a grand, hilarious, edge-of-your-seat adventure—a story about betrayal and loyalty, family history and small-town secrets.

Thirteen-year-old Frank lives the life of an ordinary teen in New Bremen, Minnesota until a slew of tragedies befall him and his family. An accident, suicide, and murder follow him through the summer of 1961, forcing him into an adult world full of secrets, lies, adultery, and betrayal. Forty-one years later, he begins the long journey of coming to terms with his jaded past, as he attempts to understand a world that seems to be falling apart around him. A brilliantly moving account of a boy standing at the door of his young manhood, Ordinary Grace explores the terrible price of wisdom and the enduring grace of God.