Ruins and eagle feathers: a first word with the reader -- How to take a walk -- Paint: a moral question -- Music of light in old windows -- And God said: "Let there be red" -- Ghost under the necessary house -- Virgin on the farmall: the Venus in the Chevy -- Last insult of the glacier -- Petrified chin music -- Cutting slices out of the wind -- Towers rising from the floor of the sky -- Visible dead.

Acknowledgments -- Sinclair Lewis: A chronology -- Foreword -- Sauk Centre -- St. Cloud -- St. Paul -- Cass Lake -- Minneapolis -- Mankato -- Elysian-Waterville -- Pequot Lakes -- Rainy Lake -- Madison -- Excelsior -- Gunflint Trail -- Duluth -- Reference notes.