Fiction

Reading Coast to Coast :: The West

Wallace Yovetich

Staff Writer

Wallace Yovetich grew up in a home where reading was preferred to TV, playing outside was actually fun, and she was thrilled when her older brothers weren’t home so she could have a turn on the Atari. Now-a-days she watches a bit more TV, and considers sitting on the porch swing (with her laptop) “playing outside”. She still thinks reading is preferable to most things, though she’d really like to find out where her mom put that old Atari (Frogger addicts die hard). She runs a series of Read-a-Longs throughout the year (as well as posting fun bookish tidbits throughout the week) on her blog, Unputdownables. After teaching for seven years, Wallace is now an aspiring writer. Blog: Unputdownables Twitter: @WallaceYovetich

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Welcome back to the Reading Road Trip here on Book Riot. We’re traveling the country through literature and making sure you have an ample amount of titles to read no matter where your next adventure takes you. Be sure to check out the entire road trip here.

“Go west, young man, go west and grow up with the country,” said Horace Greeley (presumably). Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico: this is the American west. The land of rivers, mountains, and deserts; new opportunities and hope. The place where so many risked their lives to come not much more than a century ago. It’s the wide open skies of Montana, the fields of Idaho, the remote towns of Wyoming, the mountains that join Utah and Colorado, the strip of Las Vegas, and the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico that make this diverse region such rich soil to plant the following stories in. Be sure to add your favorite titles of the west to the list!

These is My Words by Nancy E. Turner

Going Back to Bisbee by Richard Shelton

This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind by Ivan Doig

Death Comes to the Archbishop by Willa Cather

Plainsong by Kent Haruf

An Unfinished Life by Mark Spragg

The Milagro Beanfield War by John Treadwell Nichols

Close Range: Wyoming Stories by Annie Proulx

Iona Moon: A Novel by Melanie Rae Thon

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thomas

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer

The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer

Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver

A River Runs Through It and Other Stories by Norman Maclean