“You get a sense of the deep divides in this country that she had already identified in the 2010 election,” Hertel-Fernandez said.

A guiding insight

Cramer said the book she wrote was not quite what she set out to write.

In 2007, Cramer laid out maps of Wisconsin on her floor, looking for places to visit to conduct research. As a Grafton native, she already knew some of the terrain.

Cramer said she began the work with a guiding insight.

“I’ve found that the best way to study how people interpret politics is to listen to them talk with people they know in their own settings,” Cramer said.

Cramer started trekking out to small-town gathering places, engaging local residents in a running dialogue about politics.

Her initial goal was to study social class identity. What ultimately caught her interest was a sense of resentment she found throughout rural Wisconsin, rooted in a different kind of identity.