Title: In the work of their hands is their prayer
Description: "In the Work of Their Hands Is Their Prayer examines a hundred years of writing about the frontier experience. Paying particular attention to attitudes about human activity and the transformative power of the American landscape, Joel Daehnke asserts that Manifest Destiny embodied a tense, often contradictory union of Christian and secular views of social progress."

"Enlisting works by Mark Twain and Willa Cather, as well as noncanonical sources, such as private journals, Daehnke examines the manner in which the imagery of the human figure at work and play in the frontier landscape participated in the nationalist, "civilizing" project of westward expansion. While acknowledging the growing secularization of American life, Daehnke surveys the continuing claims of the Christian redemptive scheme as a powerful symbolic domain for these writers' reflections on social progress and the potential for human perfectibility in the landscapes of the West."--Jacket.
Subjects: American literature, Christianity and literature, Frontier and pioneer life in literature, History and criticism, In literature, Literature and history, Progress in literature, Redemption in literature, American literature, history and criticism, 19th century, American literature, history and criticism, 20th century, West (u.s.), in literature, Frontier and pioneer life
Places: West (U.S.)
Time periods: 19th century, 20th century