praise for A Different Plain :
“Here is a collection of short stories that shows promise to the avid reader of fiction.... The authors and stories presented in A Different Plain should be appreciated not only for their relation to Nebraska but also for their relation to American contemporary fiction in general.... What becomes most important about A Different Plain is its ability to show just how diverse, complicated, and dramatic the Great Plains really are.”

praise for The Big Empty :
“A wise friend once recommended learning about an unfamiliar place by reading the works of authors who live there. That theory proves true with this collection of 27 previously published essays and excerpts by Nebraskan nonfiction writers .... This diverse collection enables the reader to experience life in Nebraska. An excellent selection for regional libraries and academic literature collections.”

praise for The Big Empty :
“This book is a pleasure to read .... Although many of the selections are excerpts from longer works, for the most part they feel satisfyingly self-contained .... The volume as a whole .... is thoughtfully arranged .... These writers take unflinching looks at racism, the Vietnam War, rural poverty, environmental degradation, and other unflattering episodes in the state''s history. The book is nevertheless filled with humor .... [I]t's certain that readers will never look at a barbed-wire fence or a buffalo chip the same way again.”

praise for The Big Empty :
“These essays are springs from which flows our collective identity .... Read The Big Empty slowly. Savor the depth of thought, the breadth of subjects, the richness of language. Distance surrounds us, and these Nebraska writers, 'who pass through it with open eyes,' as Ron Block says, open ours.”

praise for This is Not the Tropics :
“In the utterly remarkable debut collection, This is Not the Tropics, Ladette Randolph, in her fifteen hypnotic tales, offers up a clear-eyed, captivating portrait of the Plains marked by heartache, fear, loneliness and regret. A resigned housewife trapped in a loveless marriage, on the verge of fleeing town with a reliable, good-hearted married man, finds her best-laid plans unravel when her husband unexpectedly dies in "Billy". In the poignant, unnerving, "Hyacinths", an unsettling, unexpected pregnancy and the possibility of a church group's dubious intervention, causes a once cheerful mother to become an agent of order, rebelling against the hypocrisy of a town "fossilized in the past". A college student tasked with house-sitting her eccentric professor's home replete with pornographic art and mass-murderer coffee table books and his two melodramatic, lovesick dogs to her friends' mockery and chagrin ironically discovers that her seemingly normal friendships are more horrific and fake than the home which is pure, without pretense in the collection's gem, "The Girls". In a small Nebraska town, homegrown men rally for the annual "queen contest" serves as the hilarious backdrop for a daughter facing anxiety over her families' reaction to her upcoming nuptials to a black man, but in the end, finds herself surprised by her capacity to underestimate the ones she loves in "Miss Kielbasa". In these elegant tales, Randolph eschews Middle America stereotypes to reveal vivid, complex characters, compromised in love, family and society, battling tradition amidst reality to render these prairie city inhabitants with inexorable heart, compassion and truth. Quite honestly, this is the finest collection I've seen in years. Certainly, one could compare Miss Randolph's stories to Flannery O'Connor mixed with a little Lorrie Moore & Alice Munro. Her stories aren't flashy, over-indulgent, rather they are quiet and subtle and completely heartbreaking. These are normal people living normal lives and somehow, Randolph makes them extraordinary, memorable people.”