Unexpected, dramatic stories of death have left deep marks on the physical landscape and in the cultural psyche since humans first began to weave narrative from the Plains. When scholars and writers converged in Omaha, Nebraska for the 34th Interdisciplinary Symposium of the Center for Great Plains Center, many stories received scholarly and creative attention in numerous sessions and keynote addresses headlined by renowned scholars Diane Quantic, Donald Worster, and Walter Echo-Hawk. Nonfiction essayists, fiction writers, and poets, like Verlyn Klinkenborg, Lisa Knopp, John T. Price, Alex Kava, Sean Doolittle, James Reese, Neil Harrison, and William Kloefkorn, added personal perspectives on the symposium theme. For better or worse, the Great Plains of North America have provided a staging ground for stories both tragic and mythic centered on the power and the horror of violence.