This Land is Your Land: 8 Literary Pit Stops Across the USA

This Land is Your Land: 8 Literary Pit Stops Across the USA
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

We're kicking off the summer season with a literary road trip from the lush forests of Maine, to the small towns of the Midwest, to the expansive plains of Wyoming. Each of these eight books celebrates a distinct microcosm of the American landscape. Choose your own destination and let's hit the road!

2016-06-30-1467315846-9436196-9780393348835_300.jpg
Brewster by Mark Slouka
Set in small town Brewster, New York, in 1968, this novel tells the story of two boys who find solace in their close friendship as they confront feelings of powerlessness, navigate hardships at home, and dream of an escape from their dead-end town.

Read the review here

2016-06-30-1467315872-8970741-SAGHARBOR.jpg
Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead
Benji Cooper is one of the few black students at his elite Manhattan prep school. But every summer, Benji escapes to Sag Harbor, where a small community of African American professionals have built a world of their own in the Hamptons. And although he's just as confused about this all-black refuge as he is about the white world he negotiates the rest of the year, he thinks that the summer of '85 might be one for the ages.

2016-06-30-1467315900-6971185-yhst137970348157658_2426_550583506.jpg
Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
In this moving collection of interrelated stories, Ohio-born Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) illuminates the loneliness and frustration--spiritual, emotional, and artistic--of life in a small American town.

Read the review here

2016-06-30-1467315923-4101498-CloseRange.jpg
Close Range : Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling author of The Shipping News and Accordion Crimes comes one of the most celebrated short-story collections of our time. Annie Proulx's masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in these breathtaking tales of loneliness, violence, and the wrong kinds of love.

2016-06-30-1467316233-626399-51ARNJB1XGL._SX312_BO1204203200_.jpg
Crazy in Alabama by Mark Childress
Comic, tragic, tender, and outlandish, Crazy in Alabama is the story of two journeys that converge in the deep south in 1965. Twelve-year-old Peejoe spends the summer at his grandmother's where he witnesses violent racial conflict firsthand. Meanwhile, his aunt Lucille murders her husband, drops her six kids at her mother's house, where Peejoe is staying, and heads to Los Angeles to audition for "The Beverly Hillbillies."

2016-06-30-1467316350-6779263-9780307744067.jpg
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
This cult classic of gonzo journalism is the tale of a long weekend road trip that has gone down in the annals of American pop culture as one of the strangest, most drug-soaked, and addlebrained journeys ever undertaken.

2016-06-30-1467316385-6301972-california.jpg
California by Edan Lepucki
The sunshine state lies in darkness, Los Angeles in ruins. This gripping and provocative debut novel imagines a frighteningly realistic near future, in which clashes between mankind's dark nature and irrepressible resilience force us to question how far we will go to protect the ones we love.

2016-06-30-1467316413-1840288-TheOregonTrail.jpg
The Oregon Trail by Rinker Buck
At once a majestic journey, a significant work of history, and a moving personal saga, this is the journey of a lifetime: an epic quest to travel the length of the Oregon Trail the old-fashioned way, in a covered wagon with a team of mules. A wildly ambitious work of nonfiction, it is a book with a heart as big as the country it crosses.

See the full list at Off the Shelf, a daily blog that connects great readers with great books.

More Recommendations from Off the Shelf:

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot