Spoon River is the name of the body of water that flows past Lewiston, Illinois, the small town where Masters (1868-1950) spent part of his early life. The local cemetery is located on Oak Hill. In Masters’ anthology, Spoon River becomes the name of the town where the departed souls of his narratives once lived and are now buried. A community of long standing, their stories extend as far back as the mid-Nineteenth Century. Some of the peoples’ lives have been rich and full; others have not been so well-lived. Masters’ language gives the story of each of these lives a compelling urgency, no matter how rich or common. The late inhabitants of that little town share the stories of their lives, sometimes instructively, sometimes nostalgically, sometimes lovingly, sometimes bitterly, sometimes to insure the record of the simple fact that they were there and lived a life and that it was important. One hundred years after their initial publication, the stories and their evocation of an earlier America still have a grasp on our imagination.