Books of the States: Joshua Ferris on Mary Austin

By Tom

Even after almost 20 years in Seattle I'm still enough of an East Coaster that I automatically think everything should begin there, but let's go left to right in this week's national tour, starting with California. Josh Ferris is from Illinois, and he wrote the Florida essay forState by State, but when I asked him to talk about a book that represented a state the one that came to mind was a recent discovery of his from the California desert, Mary Austin's 1903 book, The Land of Little Rain:

Vide Joshua Ferris on Mary Austin

Ferris, of course, is known for writing one of the most acclaimed debut novels in recent years, Then We Came to the End. His second novel,The Unnamed, won't be out until January, but I can report that it is both very different from his first one and remarkably good. I'll post our interview about it in the next few weeks.  --Tom

P.S. The book by John Daniel he mentions is Rogue River Journal, from Oregon, which brings us to our next video...