South Dakota’s landscapes, from wide prairies to rugged hills, offer a great backdrop for stories. If you’re curious about novels set there, here are five that really stand out. They cover different times and experiences, from pioneer life to modern thrillers.
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little Town on the Prairie” brings you into Laura’s teenage years near De Smet. The town is growing, and Laura experiences school, social events, and her first job sewing shirts. You read about her budding courtship with Almanzo Wilder.
Life wasn’t easy; the book shows the tough prairie winters and money worries. Still, you also see the simple fun they had, like 'literaries' and church gatherings, and how the community supported each other.
“The Long Winter,” also by Laura Ingalls Wilder, puts the Ingalls family right in the path of a terrible winter in the 1880s. They are snowed in for months near De Smet. Endless blizzards stop the trains, so supplies run out.
The family must survive with very little food and fuel inside their small claim shanty. I remember reading how they twisted hay into sticks to burn for warmth when the coal ran out.
It’s a powerful story about survival and how people helped one another through extreme isolation and near starvation.
Lee Child’s “61 Hours” drops Jack Reacher into a frozen South Dakota town, Bolton. His bus crashes in the snow, and he cannot leave immediately. Soon, Reacher finds himself caught up with local police who are protecting an elderly witness.
A dangerous biker gang wants her silenced, and there’s also a mysterious, massive underground facility nearby built during the Cold War. Reacher faces a strict deadline and some very dangerous people in the harsh winter weather.
In Dan O’Brien’s “Spirit of the Hills,” you follow rancher Jonathan Douglas in the western part of the state. He is trying to put his life back together after a significant personal loss. The story unfolds across South Dakota’s plains and rugged hills.
Jonathan faces many difficulties on his journey back to stability. He meets new characters and takes on the challenge of managing a wildlife preserve, specifically focused on buffalo.
The land itself feels like a character in the book; it shows the beauty and the toughness required for life on the Great Plains.
Michael Crichton’s “Dragon Teeth” takes you back to the 1870s American West, including the Black Hills.
A fictional Yale student named William Johnson travels west on a bet and gets mixed up in the bitter competition between two real-life paleontologists, Othniel Marsh and Edward Cope. They are both desperate to discover and claim dinosaur fossils during the “Bone Wars.”
William joins Marsh’s fossil-hunting trip. The journey is full of danger, with encounters with outlaws and Native American tribes like the Sioux. William has to find courage he didn’t know he had just to survive betrayals and the wilderness.