Download or read book In the Work of Their Hands is Their Prayer written by Joel Daehnke and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "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.