Here, Robert Wolf offers a collective autobiography of the American heartland written for the most part by everyday men and women without literary ambition. Focusing on the second half of the twentieth century, this collection of essays, short stories, poems, and memoirs -- woven together with Wolf's introductory notes -- is the culmination of nine years of Free River Press writing workshops conducted by Wolf for the purpose of documenting contemporary American life.

The volume includes work from homeless men and women from Tennessee, small farmers in rural Iowa, residents of Midwestern small towns, the Mississippi Delta, and river communities on the Mississippi. These first-person, eyewitness accounts offer glimpses of daily life: the farmers' struggles against large corporations; poetic meditations on life in the streets, on the mad, and in prison; tall tales of river town saloons; and the social rituals of cooking, town hall and party phone lines across America's small towns.

Together, these diverse stories comprise panels of a literary mural. of America. American Mosaic is a compelling testament to regional and local American voices and folkways which are fast disappearingthrough the relentless push towards a global economy and culture.