Describes Grant Wood's portrait of Iowa farmers, and documents how the piece has represented midwestern Puritanism, hard-working endurance, and the often-parodied American heartland.

Everyone knows her face but few ever knew her name. The stoic-faced woman in Grant Wood's American Gothic was his sister Nan, perhaps one of his closet friends and observers. In My Brother, Grant Wood, Nan Wood Graham offers us an intimate glimpse of the artist in a full-life biography. Her portrait of her brother is as direct and poignant as the portrait he painted of her. Through her anecdotes and reminiscences, Graham not only revives the vivid...

From Library Journal: In 1930, painter Grant Wood (1891-1942) created American Gothic, the iconic image of a stolid Midwestern couple complete with three-pronged pitchfork. The Art Institute of Chicago exhibited and purchased the piece, catapulting Wood to national acclaim as a regionalist. In conjunction with the opening of Wood's studio at the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art in Iowa, guest curator Milosch (Smithsonian) presents a survey of Wood's artwork...

Follows the life of the Iowa farm boy who struggled to realize his talents and who painted in Paris but returned home to focus on the land and people he knew best.