Kirkland, who readily acknowledged his indebtedness to the English realist Thomas Hardy (Hardy, Thomas), was also affected by his own personal experiences as a publisher's clerk, railroad auditor, soldier, coal-mine operator, and lawyer. He was also influenced by his mother, Caroline Kirkland, whose realistic accounts of the family's life in backwoods Michigan were published in the 1840s. He began writing late in life and was 57 when Zury: The Meanest Man in Spring County was published in 1887. The first book of the trilogy, it was praised for its portrait of the farmer Zury Prouder. The McVeys (1888), depicting village life, and The Captain of Company K (1891), about the American Civil War, complete the trilogy.