The nostalgia factor is extremely high here, and I don't know why. I've neither read the book before nor been to Minnesota, and I certainly have never lived on the prairie grasslands. I think it's the sort of long, golden haze that seeps through so much of the summertime scenes, though - I often went to play in the river with my sister in the summer when we were kids, though thankfully there were rather less blizzards and locusts. From the moment someone in the book mentioned "grasshopper summer" I could see where things were going.

Honestly, I spent quite a lot of time wondering if those grasshoppers were edible. Well, they would have been an excellent sort of protein out on the plains, wouldn't they? Grind them up for flour and don't mind about the wheat...