Go Back The Way You Came by Joey Brown is an original, full-length literary novel. The novel is preceded by a critical introduction entitled Writing in the Dirt: A Look at Identity Landscape in the Work of Female Novelists in Oklahoma. The novel follows five characters whose lives are affected by the geography and weather of the small, southwestern Oklahoma town in which they live. The introduction provides a brief history of novels set in Oklahoma written by women and how the writers use the regional geography of Oklahoma as a prominent element. The history covers novels written between 1934 and 1999. This dissertation was directed by George Economou.