"Mark Twain Made Me Do It and Other Plains Adventures" is a collection of humorous essays portraying western Nebraska life and culture of the 1950s. Anecdotes on small-town baseball and the polio epidemic of 1952 provide a historic backdrop to the story of a wide-eyed boy exploring the limits of his universe. The adventures of a Twain-inspired raft trip down the South Platte and Sputnik-inspired homemade rockets mirror a society of seemingly settled lifestyles and frenzied technological advances. Family travels, holidays with Grandpa and Grandma, and marvelous creations like his sister's...

Filled with adventurous writing, sharp scrutiny, meticulous and audacious use of language, North of the Platte, South of the Niobrara winds around its subjects the way the rivers and creeks of the Great Plains twist around humps of prairie grass, ranches and rock outcroppings. The ambitious goal of Bryan Jones is to create a fresh understanding of the Nebraska Sand Hills from the inside.