Larry Woiwode, the author of "lyrical, expansive novels, short stories, poems and essays, mostly planted in the American West, that explored the power of place, family ties and faith, spiritual and otherwise," died April 28 at age 80, the New York Times reported. Woiwode's 1975 novel, Beyond the Bedroom Wall, "a 600-page saga about four generations of a North Dakota farming clan, established his place in American letters. For its epic sweep, elegant language and essential themes, he was compared to Dickens, Melville and Tolstoy." For a decade as a young writer, Woiwode was under the mentorship of legendary editor William Maxwell, who, like Woiwode, had grown up in a small town in Illinois and gone to the state university's Urbana-Champaign campus. Woiwode's first novel, What I'm Going to Do, I Think (1969), won the William Faulkner Foundation Award for the most notable first novel of the year and was a finalist for the National Book Award. In 1978, he and his wife moved to a 160-acre farm in North Dakota, which they farmed themselves.
Woiwode's books included five novels, two short story collections, two memoirs--What I Think I Did (2000) and A Step from Death (2008)--and a collection of poetry, Even Tide. His most recent essay collection, Words for Readers and Writers: Spirit-Pooled Dialogues (2013), is available from Crossway ($25).
