A serial novel of love and survival in the early 20th-century American West
The Hard Land is Edmond A Porter's long-running serial novel, published chapter by chapter on Medium. Set in the American West of the early 1900s, the story follows the lives of ordinary people whose courage, faith, and stubbornness carry them through hardship the modern world has largely forgotten — winters that could end a family, work that broke bodies before it broke spirits, and the quiet weight of decisions made on land that gave nothing back without a fight.
The serial began in September 2023 and has grown, part by part, into one of Edmond's most sustained works of fiction. Readers who follow it weekly describe it as a slow-burning Western — closer in temperament to the rural realism of Wallace Stegner or Kent Haruf than to the gunfights of pulp Westerns. The land itself is a character. So is the silence between the people who try to make a life on it.
Themes
- Love under pressure. Marriages, courtships, and family bonds tested by isolation, scarcity, and grief.
- Survival as a daily practice. Not a single dramatic crisis but the relentless arithmetic of weather, livestock, debt, and luck.
- The cost of staying. What people give up to remain on land that has shaped them, and what it costs them to leave.
- Inherited faith and quiet doubt. Characters who pray, work, and wonder whether either one will be enough.
Where to start
The serial is best read in order. New readers should begin at Part 1 and let the world build at its own pace.
- Start here: The Hard Land — Part 1 (Jun 17, 2023)
- Most recent installment: The Hard Land — Part 33 (Apr 11, 2024)
- Read the full list on Medium: The Hard Land — all parts
Most installments are published under Medium's Pure Fiction publication. A Medium membership is helpful but not required to read most parts.
About the author
Edmond A Porter is a Utah author with deep roots in rural Idaho. He grew up on a family dairy farm outside Preston, and the physical reality of agricultural life — the hours, the weather, the equipment, the animals — informs everything he writes. The Hard Land draws on that lived knowledge of land and labor, transposed onto the harder, less forgiving West of a century ago.
Learn more on the About page, or explore Edmond's other work:
- Turbulent Waters — historical fiction set against the 1976 Teton Dam collapse. Releases June 1, 2026.
- The Seasons That Made Me — essays and poems on growing up on a Preston, Idaho dairy farm.
- Latest articles — essays and reflections on writing, craft, and place.