U.S. REGIONAL FICTION

The following annotated book list is a sampling of the U.S. Regional Fiction that is available. All the books listed are set in the Unites States during the 20^th century. The books included were all selected because of their strong regional flavors. The books’ settings are so vividly drawn as to make you almost feel as if you are there with the characters of the novels.If a book on this list interests you and is not available in the Library, please ask the librarian to obtain the book for you from another library through Interlibrary Loan.  

Algren, Nelson
A Walk on the Wild Side
Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1956. 346 p.
New Orleans in the early years of Depression –that’s the setting, and the author makes you feel the down and dirty atmosphere from the opening page. Algren traces the experiences of one Dove Linkhorn, as he explores the underbelly of a distinctive American city at a low point in the country’s history. Most of the characters he meets are a bit depraved, but they’re exceptionally well realized; wry humor and genuine pathos abound. Considered shocking when it was first published, the book probably won’t raise many eyebrows these days, but the vivid writing will still command attention. It’s a rough, raffish read—rich in originality and authenticity—but definitely not everyone’s cup of chicory.

Bellard, F. W.
The True Sea
Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1984. 289 p.
The True Sea is about the building of a railroad from Miami, Florida, to Key West during the 1920’s. A rail line is slated to run through the fictional settlement of Doctor’s Arms. The Story centers on the towns residents’ reactions to the coming of the railroad and how their lives will be changed by what most of the people perceive as progress.

Bradbury, Ray
Dandelion Wine
Knopf, 1975. 269 p.
Story of a boy’s growing up in a small town in mid-America (Green Town, also known as Waukegan, Illinois) during the early days if this century. Remembered are all the pleasures of long summer days—time that seemed forever until school bells rang again. Collecting fireflies, enjoying the arcade, taking a last street car ride and knowing all about your neighbors and their stories. It is learning about time and death and how the past lingers into the present, even in bottles of dandelion wine.

Brown, Rita Mae
Bingo
Bantam Books, 1988. 291 p.
Runnymede, a small town divided down the middle by the Mason-Dixon line, is half in Pennsylvania and half in Maryland. It comes complete with town square including both Confederate and Yankee statues and some of the zaniest characters. There are the two eighty year old sisters, Julie and Louise, whose sharp-tongued rivalry is legendary; and Nicole, Julie’s daughter, editor of the town paper, town lesbian who is entangled in an affair with her best friend’s husband. Their lives revolve around the weekly bingo game which is far from a sedate affair. Flamboyant characters and rich language characterize this engaging portrayal of the idiosyncrasies of small town life with humor so broad and infectious you will laugh out aloud.

Chase, Joan
During the Reign of the Queen of Persia
Harper & Row, 1983. 224 p.
Chase’s first novel is a beautifully told story of three generations of women who come together for a family reunion of sorts when one of them is stricken with cancer. Set on a farm in Northern Ohio in the 1950’s the novel moves from present to past to present as it waves tales of life, love, loss and dying. Gram, Dubbed the Queen of Persia by a son-in-law, is the reigning monarch of this heartland matriarchy of five daughters four daughters and less significantly, their fathers, husbands and lovers. The granddaughters are collectively and individually the narrative "we" voice used by the author. This technique keeps the narrative voice on the farm to emphasize the literal and symbolic significance of Gram's "kingdom" to the lives and memories of the characters.

Colwin, Laurie
Happy All the Time
Knopf, 1978. 214 p.
Free-spirited and looking for romance, Vincent and Guido are best friends (and third cousins) living in yuppie Manhattan. It’s love at first sight for Guido and Holly, but Vincent has a harder time. He’s fallen for Misty who’s afraid of commitment and needs Vincent’s sweet courtship to convince her.

Conroy, Pat
The Prince of Tides
Houghton Mifflin, 1986. 567 p.
The cadence of life in the South Carolina low country springs to life through the unraveling of Tom Wingo’s troubled family history as he tries to save his twin sister Savannah, a gifted and troubled poet, from self-destruction. Through Tom’s eyed we experience his turbulent family life and discover, as he does, that hope and a belief in the future can overcome a past violence, abandonment and lost dreams. With the help of Susan Lowenstein, Savannah’s psychiatrist, Tom realizes that he may be able to save the remnants if his own crumbling marriage and career, as well as, saving Savannah.

Doig, Ivan
English Creek
Atheneum, 1984. 333 p.
Jick McCaskill comes of age in Montana during the 1930’s. It is summertime and Jick experiences rodeos, picnics, square dances and the Fourth of July as a maturing young person. Part of Jick’s growing up comes with the responsibility of work with his dad counting sheep on the range. His brother Alec is causing turmoil in the family because he wants to marry a town girl and work as a cowboy. The feel of ranching life, its happiness and hardship, is lovingly depicted in this novel.

Dorris, Michael
A Yellow Raft in Blue Water
Henry Holt, 1987. 343 p.
A Montana Indian reservation and the hold it has on the unforgettable women whose roots are there is the heart of this novel. Three generations of Indian women tell their stories. These first person narratives all start when each is still moving beyond girlhood. Each has her own vulnerability, her attachment to her heritage, her unique sense of place, and her own secrets.

Eastlake, William
The Bronc People
Harcourt Brace, 1958. 254 p.
Two boys come of age in New Mexico during the 1950’s in this novel of unconventional humor. Little Sant longs to be bronc rider. His foster brother Alastair is still searching for his identity. Both boys cling to important experiences which no one else quite believes. These memories are bond to the land and hold secrets to the boys’ innermost selves. The land unites the offbeat characters—nonstereotypical cowboys, Indians, ranchers and missionaries. The frontier is dying, but the myth remains in the beauty of Indian country. Second in a trilogy of novels set in the southwest; the others are Go in Beauty and Portrait of an Artist with 26 Horses.

Edgerton, Clyde
The Floatplane Notebooks
Algonquin Books, 1988. 265 p.
Listre North Carolina, has been home for the Copeland family from the time of the Vietnam War all the way back to 20 years before the Civil War when Meredith’s great-great-grandmother planted the wisteria vine that has taken over the woods near the family graveyard. Ostensibly, the notebooks are to record the test "flights" of the floatplane Meredith’s father has been building. They include the growth of the children, the names of the dogs, the annual hunting trips, and the family reunions each year to clean the graveyard and trim back the wisteria vine which intertwines with the voices of the Copelands uniting the past and present in this wonderful book.

Edgerton, Clyde
Raney
Algonquin Books, 1985. 227 p.
Charming portrait of the modern Southern marriage of Raney, a Free Will Baptist Church member, and Charles, an Episcopalian. With too much unlikely spouses, clashes are inevitable and very entertaining. Egderton is particularly adept at conveying "typical" Southern diaglogue and a strong sense of place. He also illustrates Southern change of thought and attitudes, especially racially and religiously, depending upon each character’s age and experience. The marital education of Charles and Raney will leave the reader refreshingly satisfied.

Edgerton, Clyde
Walking Across Egypt
Algonquin Books, 1987. 217 p.
Unique melding of youth and old age occurs when Mattie Rigsbee, 78, meets Wesley Benfield, a juvenile delinquent. Mattie is a traditional Southern woman who tries to live as the "good Lord intends her to". Enter Wesley and Mattie finds some of her beliefs sorely tried. Egderton demonstrates his talent at character development as the book’s tone and language shift when the young man enters the story. The author manages to entertain and reaffirm youth and old age in a story line seldom attempted in modern American fiction.

Ehrlich, Gretel
Heart Mountain
Viking, 1988. 412 p.
Betrayed by the U.S Government during World War 11, one group of Japanese-Americans has been moved to a relocation camp in the rugged wilderness of Wyoming. Partly raised by Bobby Koremantsu, neighboring rancher Mc-Kay—who could not go to war because of a bad leg—is sympathetic to the camp inhabitants and becomes involved with Mariko, a painter, who is married to a militant leader of the draft resistant. Reverberating with the immense landscapes and stoic individualism she wrote about in her essays The Solace of Open Spaces, Ehrlich’s richly textured first novel is a compelling read.

Gerber Judith
Mendocino
Crown, 1988. 356 p.
A story of the brawling, lustly growth of Mendocino city and county, from 1842 to 1973 as seen through the lives and experiences of the Beriankov (Ross)-James-Prinz (Prince) family. Nicolai Beriankov, a Russian immigrant, stays behind when the other residents of Ross, California, return to the motherland and moves to the village of his Indian wife. Massacres and the gold rush encourage Nicolai to build a strong redwood home in the forest and it is this house, its strength and isolation, which sustains and protects his family through the years which follow. Excellent portrayal of the gold rush, the anti-Chinese feeling the arrival of the railroad, the San Francisco earthquake, and other events in the growth of the new state of California.

Hillerman, Tony
Skinwalkers
Harper & Row, 1986. 216 p.
Edgar Award winner Hillerman’s fascination with the Navajo culture comes through in his series of mysteries featuring Lt. Leaphorn and Officer Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police. The reader is enmeshed in Navajo life, language and customs with a mix of contemporary and traditional Indian Portrayals. New Mexico is graphically portrayed with its stark beauty and remoteness as the reader is given a tour of southwestern landmarks. Leaphorn and Chee’s investigation of three murders is linked to Indian mysticism and folklore as they begin to suspect a "skinwalker" or witch to be responsible.

Hodges, Hollis
Norman Rockwell’s Greatest Painting
Paul S. Erickson, 1988. 261 p.
Of course the setting is in Norman Rockwell’s Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where the owner- model of a Rockwell painting wants to hold a reunion of everyone who appeared in the picture. This modest ambition is not so simple after all but is catalyst for a chain of events. Hodges’ New England is small towns where people still care about and are kind to one another. Protagonist Ebert Olney is a wonderful combination of kindness, wisdom and wit. After encountering him, the reader is likely to try to imitate his kind ways.

Kennedy, William
Billy Phelan’s Greatest Game
Viking, 1978. 282 p.
Albany, New York, in 1938, life among the slightly shabby, low lifes who frequent the bowling alleys, diners, taverns, pool halls. People on the fringe seen with a sympathetic eye and an understanding of true valour. Martin, local newspaperman, and Billy Phelan, a small time hustler, become involved as go-between and informer when the mob boss’ son is kidnapped. One reluctantly, one philosophically. A powerful sense of time and place pervades this satisfying story of integrity and survival.

Kiker, Douglas
Murder on Clam Pond
Random House, 1986. 228 p.
Picturesque Cape Cod is the setting for these mysteries. Ex-investigative reporter Mac McFarland, formerly from Chicago, is without a family, a job, and a future. In Murder on Clam Pond, rich Jane Drexel is found murdered outside Mac’s rented rundown house and Mac is the obvious suspect until he discovers the secret relationships between Mrs. Drexel and the trustees of the foundation created by her will.

Kiker, Douglas
Death at the Cut
Random House, 1988. 259 p.
Death at the Cut finds Mac writing a profile of presidential candidate Senator Dolf Bridges. When a drowned girl in a Volkswagon submerged in the water is found, Mac discovers that a great many people, including the Senator, knew the girl.

Langton, Jane
Dark Nantucket Noon
Harper & Row, 1975. 293 p.
The prospect of viewing a total eclipse draws poet Kitty Clark to Nantucket. When, after the total darkness caused by the eclipse, she is found blood-stained, bending over the body of her ex-lover’s wife, she is charged with murder. During the 6 months until the trial, she and Homer Kelly, former police detective and amateur sleuth , hope to discover the murderer’s identity by immersing themselves in Nantucket’s physical environs. Piecing together clues from the tides and the sands, Homer finally recognizes the killer, but is too late to save Kitty?

Langton, Jane
Emily Dickinson is Dead
St. Martin’s Press, 1984. 247 p.
It is the one hundredth anniversary of Emily’s death and Amherst residents plan a memorial symposium. An innocent enough endeavor? Not really. Several people including the Emily Dickinson model, are mysteriously murdered. Langton skillfully conveys the atmosphere of Amherst and how it is permeated by "Dickinsoniana". The plot is clever and dialogue well executed. The story is a blend of Dickinson lore, New England life, nice people, not so nice people and a puzzle to unravel.

Laurie, Alison
The Nowhere City
Avon Books, 1986. 336 p.
Los Angeles is the titular town, and the Pulitzer Prize winning author in on its residents and their rituals with a razor-sharp wit. Paul, the central character, has left Havard to join a West Coast corporation. His wife, Katherine, thinks he’s made a disastrous mistake. He loves L.A., claiming the sun enhances his sexual desires. She hates it—the smog gives her sinus headaches. When their lives intersect with a sensual waitress named Ceci and a Beverly Hills shrink named Iz, the stage is set for hilarious romantic complications. With liberal doses of irony, the author reveals her total disbelief in the existence of chosen locale. She creates an outrageous portrait of marriage American –style, highlighting the glitter and tackiness of the surroundings and at the same time, exposing the appalling emptiness beneath the surface.

Maclean, Norman
A River Runs Through It and Other Stories
University of Chicago Press, 1976. 217 p.
Turned down by one publisher because "These stories have trees in them", this slight collection of autobiographical fiction is set in the western Rocky Mountains of Montana where Maclean grew up learning about life and fly-fishing from his father—a Presbyterian minister and a Scot—who believed that man by nature was a mess. Whether paying tribute to his younger brother or describing a saloon fight from underneath the card table, Maclean observes human nature and the Blackfoot River with the wit and tenderness of insight and the voice of a poet.

Martin, William
Back Bay
Crown, 1979. 437 p.
Boston’s historic Back Bay area from 1814 to the 1970’s provides the backdrop for this fast paced tale of adventure and romance. A silver tea set, fashioned by Paul Revere himself and a gift to President Washington, was stolen from the Madison White in 1814. But historian Peter Fallon discovers the link between the tea set, Boston’s aristocratic Pratt family, and a cipher that reveals the treasure’s location, he also finds his own life in danger.

Ogilvie, Elisabeth
The Road to Nowhere
McGraw-Hill, 1983. 308 p.
Roz and Julie are sisters brought up by an ultrastrict unstable Mummie and a cowardly but loving father, Jondy. At fourteen the family moves to a Maine coastal island where Jondy takes a job as caretaker of the Benedict family manse. Isolated on the island Billy Benedict comes to the homestead for a visit, befriends the girls, and attempts to help them. How they "escape" and establish their own identities will keep the reader captivated and straining to untangle this emotional jumble caused by a tainted past.

Paretsky, Sara
Killing Orders
Morrow, 1985. 288 p.
Five million dollars worth of securities turn up missing from the safe at the Dominican priory. Counterfeit replacement point the finger of suspicion at anyone with access to the safe, like V.I Warshawski’s hateful aunt Rosa. Bound by a pledge made to her dead mother, V.I. reluctantly agrees to look into the matter for the harridan--at a family rate. V.I. moves easily through Chicago, the city she knows and thrives on and which she vicariously shares with her reader. Before this bright, witty hard-boiled genre dick created by Paaretsky solves the case, she takes on the Church, the corporate world, the F.B.I and the mob. The tense climax and the crimes’s explosive resolution should satisfy the toughest hard-boiled genre addict.

Pearson, Ridley
Undercurrents
St. Martin’s Press, 1988. 386 p.
Seattle and the Puget Sound figure strongly in this gripping police thriller. Sgt. Lou Boldt heads the investigation to capture the Cross Killer, a serial killer who has terrorized the Green Lake community for months. Finally, however, Boldt begins to suspect a copy cat killer is also at work—and it has to be someone inside the investigation, someone on the force.

Piercy, Marge
Braided Lives
Summit Books, 1982. 443 p.
This novel follows the lives of Piercy’s feminist heroine Jill and her cousin and best friend Donna from their 1950’s adolescence in Detroit to their adulthood in New York City twenty years later. The book is especially effective in its portrayal of student life at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in the ‘60’s as the characters grow and change as they participate in student activism and learn that they are ultimately responsible for the control of their lives.

Powell, Padgett
Edisto
Farrar Farrar Strauss & Giroux, 1984. 183 p.
Simons Manigault is a precocious twelve-year old who tells the story of his life in Edisto, an undeveloped strip of coastland between Savannah and Charleston. His mother, the Duchess, leads a busy, eccentric life. His father the Progenitor, left them five years ago. Left to his own devices,Sim busily absorbs the free and easy life around him. Teenie, their black maid, and Taurus, the process server who comes on business and decides to stay, guide Sim through a hilarious and offbeat adolescence. When his parents decide to reconcile and move away from untamed Edisto to Hilton Head, Sim recognizes how different his life will be.

Roche III, George C.
Going Home
Greenhill, 1986. 182 p.
George was raised in the mountains of Colorado about 100 miles from Denver. After a successful twenty -year business career in New York, he yearns for his roots. A summer trip is planned, but this vacation turns into a visit of two decades. Reflections of home, how it’s changed; how it’s stayed the same; are recorded in this journal.

Rogers, Thomas
At the Shores
Simon & Schuster, 1980. 284 p.
A book reminiscent of The Summer of ’42 but set in Chicago and on the Indiana shores of Lake Michigan. Growing up in the 1940’s, high school student Jerry Engles worries about school, his future, an women most of all. His fantasies and dreams are filled with the girls he knows or wishes he knew. Then one summer he finds how wonderful romantic and erotic ardor can be with girlfriend Rosalind. Theirs is, however, a typical summer romance with a bittersweet ending.

Rushing, Jane Gilmore
Winds of Blame
Doubleday, 1983 304 p.
In the Summer of 1916, the citizens of rural Greenfields, Texas, close ranks to cover up the murder of a man who " needed killing" and in so doing set in motion a series of events which can only end in tragedy, particularly for two families and the outsider who dares to love one of their daughters. Archie Hastings was the outsider who also happened to be a reporter. Because of this, the town elders decided he must be discouraged in his pursuit of the victim’s daughter and were not above interfering with the delivery of the U.S. mail to ensure the success of this discouragement. An excellent picture of rural West Texas in the early twentieth century.

Sarton, May
Kinds of Love
Norton, 1970. 464 p.
Willard, a sprawling, but small town in rural New Hampshire, is about to celebrate its bicentennial. Winter people and summer people have co-existed in Willard since the post Civil War days—not without some friction. Christina and her stroke recovering husband will spend their first winter in Willard. With her lifetime friend and town resident Ellen, Christiana will renew and test friendship. Writing the town history, poaching, young love, love between elders, and what war can do to the mind are story threads found in Kinds of Love. A memorable book.

Savic, Sally
Elysian Fields
Scribners, 1988. 149 p.
Alice jumps at the chance to move to New Orleans, a city of excitement and mystery, so different from her mid-western background,. Marshall, the man she marries, has these same magnetic qualities. His sudden disappearance has everyone guessing. Did he die? Is he hiding from the law? Is he living has everyone guessing. Tracking down leads takes Alice all over the "Big Easy".

Siddons, Anne Rivers
Peachtree Road
Harper, 1988. 566 p.
You can almost feel the heat rising off the pavement on this tale of the decline of the genteel social elite of Atlanta and the rise of the civil rights movement and a new bustling Sunbelt metropolis. In a style both languorous and suspenseful, Shepard Gibbs Bondurant 111 tells the story of his beautiful and emotionally needy cousin Lucy. Abandoned by her father and spurned by her mother, Lucy finds in Shep her only true friend. But her manipulative and destructive nature do her in and almost ruin his life as well. The supporting characters are all finely drawn and the story will remain with you long after this sizeable book has been finished.

Silko, Leslie Marmon
Ceremony
Viking, 1977. 261 p.
The power of the New Mexican landscape, its splendor and its poverty is the basis of this novel about a troubled half-breed Languna Indian. Tayo’s anxiety is doubled- edged. He has returned from World War 11 shellshocked from combat on Batan where he saw the faces of his ancestors in the faces of the Japanese soldiers. Once home, he finds his family estranged and humiliated by his illness. In order to receive a healing ceremony, Tayo seeks out Bentonie, an unlikely medicine man whose shack looks down on Gallup near Highway 66. With the help of Ts’eh, the mountain spirit of Mount Taylor, Tayo learns that peace can only be found in respect and love for the land.

Simons, Diane
Let the Bastards Freeze in the Dark
Simon & Schuster, 1980. 286 p.
Four misfits, angered with the way they have been treated in Alaska, hijack the Fairbanks Power and Light plant after luring representatives of the towns three leading industries to the plant for a reception and briefing on future plans. Although perfectly planned, the action goes wrong from the very beginning: the pipeline company sends its public relations man rather than its manger, the evangelist is not what he pretends to be, the town’s richest lady is too old to understand what is going on, and the local sheriff manages to slip into the plant and get himself killed. Excellent description of Fairbanks, the state of Alaska and Alaskan weather.

Smith, Charles Merrill
Reverend Randollph and the Holy Terror
G.P. Putnam, 1980. 236 p.
The Chicago setting and some rather thinly disguised people, places and situations make this who-done-it particularly enjoyable for Chicagoland readers. The sleuth is Rev. C.P. Randoiiph, former football player and current pastor of a wealthy Loop church. Randollph must track down the lunatic who is systematically killing off Chicago’s clergy before the revered himself is a victim. Samantha Stack, gorgeous talk show hostess and the future Mrs. Randollph, adds just the right spice and irreverence to this novel which is part of a series.

Smith, Lee
Black Mountain Breakdown
G.P. Putnam, 1980. 228 p.
Small town Appalachia is brought alive in this story with its funerals, revivals, beauty contests, and the neighbor ladies with their home permanents, soap operas, and jello salads. Above them looms the mountain, big, black and mysterious. Crystal Spangler has everything going for her; she’s bright, beautiful and popular. But Crystal is just playing roles- the cheerleader, the beauty queen, the religious visionary, the wife. Never quite sure who she is she drifts through life taking her cues from her family, friends and lovers. By living at home and teaching at the local school she achieves a fragile sense of ordinary existence, but others force their expectations on her she gives in to the "black mountain breakdown" and turns to madness.

This bibliography was compiled by members of the Adult Reading Round Table Steering Committee; Ted Balcom, Susan Baird, Carol Blohm, Diane Brodson, Nancy Brown, Jamie Bukovac, Muzette Diefenthal, Laura Dudnik, Rita Guttman, Merle Jacob, Marjorie Kiefer, Nancy Liggin, Betsy Levins, Vivian Mortensen, Joyce Saricks and Joyce Voss.

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