About the Book

This book from North Dakota State University Press is the first full biography of Paul Southworth Bliss — soldier, journalist, poet, and one of North Dakota's most significant yet overlooked literary figures.

Drawing on previously unpublished letters, military records, newspaper archives, and personal correspondence, authors Lillian Crook and Jim Fuglie reconstruct a life lived at the intersection of war, words, and the wide plains of the American West.

Spanning twenty-one chapters, the book traces Bliss from his early years through his service in the First World War, his return to Bismarck, and his decades of literary and civic engagement — culminating in a reassessment of his enduring legacy.