I just finished This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger, and I’m hoping to find more books that involve some kind of journey / adventure through the rural United States. Something where the Midwestern or Western landscape plays a significant role in the story.
I’m open to any time period, and fiction or non-fiction as well. It also doesn’t have to be a coming of age story. Really just anything with strong Americana vibes that involves travel through the rural US. Any thoughts? Thank you for any suggestions!
by ilovethedriftless
7 Comments
Travels with Charley. by John Steinbeck. And one of my very very favorites titled Blue Highways by Least Heat Moon.
*At the Edge of the Orchard* — Tracy Chevalier
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, traveling partly through Mexico but holds a western vibe.
Peace Like a River by Leif Enger.
Blurb: “When Israel Finch and Tommy Basca, the town bullies, break into the home of school caretaker Jeremiah Land, wielding a baseball bat and looking for trouble, they find more of it than even they expected. For seventeen-year-old Davey is sitting up in bed waiting for them with a Winchester rifle. His younger brother Reuben has seen their father perform miracles, but Jeremiah now seems as powerless to prevent Davey from being arrested for manslaughter, as he has always been to ease Reuben’s daily spungy struggle to breathe. Nor does brave and brilliant nine-year-old Swede, obsessed as she is with the legends of the wild west, have the strength to spring Davey from jail.
Yet Davey does manage to break out. He steals a horse, and disappears. His family feels his absence so sorely, the three of them just pile into their old Plymouth, towing a brand new 1963 Airstream trailer, and set out on a quest to find him. And they follow the outlaw west, right into the cold, wild and empty Dakota Badlands.
Set in the 1960s on the edge of the Great Plains, PEACE LIKE A RIVER is that rare thing, a contemporary novel with an epic dimension. Told in the touching voice of an asthmatic eleven-year-old boy, it revels in the legends of the West, resonates with a soul-expanding sense of place, and vibrates with the possibility of magic in the everyday world. Above all, it shows how family, love, and faith can stand up to the most terrifying of enemies, the most tragic of fates.”
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier.
Blurb: “A soldier wounded in the Civil War, Inman turns his back on the carnage of the battlefield and begins the treacherous journey home to Cold Mountain, and to Ada, the woman he loved before the war began.
As Inman attempts to make his way across the mountains, through the devastated landscape of a soon-to-be-defeated South, Ada struggles to make a living from the land her once-wealthy father left when he died. Neither knows if the other is still alive.”
Also The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver.
Blurb: “It is the charming, engrossing tale of rural Kentucky native Taylor Greer, who only wants to get away from her roots and avoid getting pregnant. She succeeds, but inherits a three-year-old Native American girl named Turtle along the way, and together, from Oklahoma to Arizona, half-Cherokee Taylor and her charge search for a new life in the West. Hers is a story about love and friendship, abandonment and belonging, and the discovery of surprising resources in seemingly empty places.”
I moved to Colorado and, completely unrelated, someone gave me {{My Antonia}}. It’s set in pioneer times in the west. I also read the book {{Oh, Pioneers}} by the same author but I didn’t like that as much though it’s still good.
Then there’s Jon Krakauer’s {{Into the Wild}} or Cheryl Strayed {{Wild}} in the non-fiction section (though Krakauer’s book is bleak). Also in this category might be {{A Walk in the Woods}} by Bill Bryson (though set on the east coast).