"Dudley presents a subtle, insightful, and nuanced treatment of the rural 'community' itself, emphasizing its divisions and contradictions. . . . [A] very good and enlightening book. With Debt and Dispossession, Kathryn Dudley joins the ranks of such anthropologists as Jane Adams, Deborah Fink, and Sonya Salamon who are presently doing more than rural historians to illuminate the nature and texture of rural American society."
— David Danbom, Rural History
"Dudley writes with rare skill and passion. This is a midstream account of America coming of age. Midwesterners are protagonists who may yet wrest a more satisfactory resolution, thanks to this superb contribution."
— Deborah Fink, Annals of Iowa