After reading this review of South Toward Home by Margaret Eby, I started to think of what a “northern” literary tour might look like, specifically one in Minnesota.

I take exception to this line in the review: “In explaining her route, Eby raises the venerable question of why the South produces more gifted writers per capita than other regions, a conventional assumption that might not stand examination in a work of formal scholarship.” I am glad to see the last part of that sentence. I would argue that the South did not produce more gifted writers than other regions, but that those writers simply are more well known. Perhaps Southern writers are more quick to tout themselves than the humble Midwestern writer? Hmmmm?

I think anyone could take a tour similar to Eby’s here in Minnesota. I would start with these three places:

* Walnut Grove. Home to Laura Ingalls Wilder and the inspiration for On the Banks of Plum Creek.

* Sinclair Lewis summer home in Mankato (scroll down to second page of PDF for more information). Lewis wrote the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Main Street right here in my town.

* Go on a walking tour of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s St. Paul.

What sites would you add?