The US is Odd in that it has so many different geographic and cultural regions in it, each with different geology, geography, history, food-ways, and other things, yet we mostly speak a common language. Mostly – watching a novice try to eat a Navajo taco by folding it like a Tex-Mex or California taco is entertaining for those outside of mess range. And a culee, wash, arroyo, gully, gulch, ravine, valley, draw are similar but not quite the same. I enjoy this regional variety, and the books it produces.
Regional books come in all genres and styles and quality. They range from academic monographs to memoirs to poetry to family history to cookbooks to folklore to travel stories to natural histories to political exposés and novels. Some become national or international best sellers, despite being regional (Tony Hillerman’s mystery novels, Willa Cather’s books about Nebraska and New Mexico, Edward Abbey’s novels and non-fiction*.) Others stay regional best-sellers, or at least are inflicted, er, used by colleges and high schools as examples of literature and local writing (Rudolfo Anaya’s books in the Southwest, Ole Rolvaag in the northern Plains.)
What makes a regional book “regional?” Setting, culture, language, those are the big three hallmarks for me. You might add or swap out other things as well. The place has to play a role in the story. It might not be a character in its own right (Conrad Richter The Sea of Grass, Elmer Kelton The Year it Never Rained, Charles Frazier Cold Mountain) but it has to shape the story in some way. That way needs to be place specific. Men to Match my Mountains has to take place in the California and Nevada mining districts and the area around them. Low Country by Ann Rivers Siddons wouldn’t work outside the South Carolina Low Country and the cultures and landscape there.
Regional culture also plays a major role. Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop describes the collision between the French archbishop of Santa Fe, New Mexico Territory, and the older Hispano religious tradition that he finds. Cather makes Bishop Lamy the hero of the tale. Other writers and historians take a different view. Rolvaag’s story needs the Scandinavian immigrant culture of Minnesota/eastern Dakotas to make the plot go. One of the tensions is between the protagonist, who adapts to the plains and the demands of farming there, and who is willing to break Scandinavian custom to do it, and his wife. Her heart never leaves the Old Country, and she is appalled at what her husband does, even though that act is legal and necessary by US law and custom. Tony Hillerman’s books don’t make sense without the Navajo tribal cultures and traditions. They steer the stories, as does the landscape. In one book, for example, Sgt. Joe Leaphorn sees a dust devil pick up sand and turn pale, and he associates it with the stories of Changing Woman and other Navajo deities.
Language is not as important in some ways as it used to be. Southern regionalist literature (1870s-1930s or so) was very much about the language of the place, the dialects. Dialect writing has faded away, probably because we are far less of an aural culture than we used to be, in part because it is so dang hard to catch dialects well, and in part because of accusations of cultural imperialism or whatever. I’ve read the original Uncle Remus stories. You have to read them aloud in your head to get the flow and rhythm of the language. However, local terms and descriptions are still vital. Certain terms used by cowboys in north Texas or in the Brush Country are very different from those of Montana/Alberta and from the Great Basin and California (cowhands vs. cowboys vs. vaqueros). “That’s as cute as a cancer-eyed cow” makes no sense to an urban dweller. Someone who has been around pale cattle, especially Herefords, will wince**. “He’s a real mensch” makes perfect sense in New York or other places with a good-sized Yiddish-speaking population. In Grand Island, Nebraska? It might need some explaining. Or serves as a huge “tell” that the speaker spent time elsewhere.
You can even use this in sci-fi and fantasy. The “homogenious planet/galactic empire” that we all make fun of may well collide with a place where different groups have developed very different local cultures. Terraforming went wrong, and so people had to adapt and toss the “official plan” out the window. This will lead to conflicts if/when the bureaucrats ever reappear. Or it will give the “easy target” a special advantage, because they don’t think or respond like the people over on that other side of the world.
What are some regional books that you enjoyed, or books that draw on regionalism?
Image Credit: Author photo El Rancho de los Golondrinas, July 2023.
*He tapped into the zeitgeist of a certain sub-set of the environmental movement, and he wrote very well.
**I have seen a cow with eye cancer. A Hereford. It was very ugly, and I suspect the cow was going to be euthanized unless she was an especially good mother cow. She would lose the eye either way.
Mad Genius Club 
13 responses to “Regional Books”
Favorite regional books? Where to start?
In the mystery field Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe series is regional – New York City – even when Wolfe and Goodman leave New York. Then it’s all about the clash of NYC culture with wherever they are. All of Dashiell Hammett’s stories have a regional feel, whether Sam Spade’s San Francisco or the general west of the Continental Op. And you cannot get more Southern California than Raymond Chandler.
More modern series include Sue Grafton’s Santa Barbara (don’t be fooled by the name Santa Teresa), Loren Estleman’s Detroit (and Southeast Michigan) and Susan Wittig Albert’s Central Texas. None of those series flow without the place they are set.
In SF the most obvious answer is H. Beam Piper’s “A Planet for Texans/Lone Star Planet.” Yes, it is a spoof of Texas culture, but one most Texans would be proud to claim. A lot of the planets on which Jerry Pournelle’s CoDominium series is set have very regional feels, based on who settled them. Of course, the Honorverse – when the action is on Earth – is set in Old Chicago, the Chicago of our world. And it has a very Chicago feel.
And yes, those are all favorite.
I might go so far as to say I like books with regional settings because the regional setting adds depth to the story. I just finished a book set 600 years in the future (Exogenesis) in which a regional feel (rural North America and Northeast Corridor urban) are what provide the clash of cultures that keeps the book moving. (It is good enough I will be reviewing it in a couple of weeks.) Giving a story a regional basis grounds it in a solid foundation.
The most obvious example I can think of are Manly Wade Wellman’s tales of Appalachian folk magic.
Yes. The Silver John, and to a lesser extent the much shorter Parson Jaeger, stories, are amazing works of fiction.
So of course I’ve seen an slightly increasing tide of ‘Wellman was a racist Nazi bigot because he didn’t hate Southerners in his fiction’. Never mind the stories he wrote about black Africans that were very sympathetic to and respectful of them. Maybe it’s for the best he remains mostly unknown.
Wellman grew up in a remote part of Africa, with black playmates and local mentors, and spoke an African language as one of his native tongues. (His parents were missionaries.)
Anybody who reads him and thinks the man was a racist should give up pretensions to having a brain. I mean, yes, his African side isn’t his most famous side, but come the freak on.
The woke are so racist and so unimaginative.
Correction – his dad was a medical officer, but anyway, still out in the boonies, in the Zambezi mountains in what is now Angola. Sorry.
Among my favorites are:
Tony Hillerman’s Navajo series.
William Kent Krueger’ Cork O’Connor series (northern Minnesota)
Jonathan Gash’s Lovejoy series
My wife loves Joanne Fluke’s Hannah Swenson series (northern Minnesota again) and the Mitford series by Jan Karon.
The Mitford stories sometimes make gentle fun of Southern mannerisms and characters, but it is always loving. I spent time in that part of the Carolinas, and found her books a refreshing contrast to other things I read about the area.
A book that immediately came to mind is “The Milagro Beanfield War” by John Nichols (along with its sequels), and there are also the Ballad mysteries by Sharyn McCrumb, set in Appalachia.
Mom loves the Sharyn McCrumb books. I wasn’t thrilled with Nichols’ stories, but it might be from laughing in the wrong places (especially at the movie.)
Oh, my spouse did that, too. Which got some weird looks since we were in New England at the time and so not too many Spanish speakers.
Oh, my – regional books. I suppose one author that I read very early on, who described urban Southern California in the 1930s was Raymond Chandler. There were bits and pieces of that world still lingering in various places when I was growing up there, thirty years later.
Another writer who “did” Southern California very well (and still does, in her ’20s mysteries set in Hollywood) is Barbara Hambly. Some of her fantasy series started off in rural California, and she described places there so well that it resonated with me. One of her books even had a chapter set in Big Tujunga Wash – and my family lived for some years in a hilly suburb adjacent to the Wash – we used to ride our horse there.
My own books probably must be classed as regional – especially the historical series. They sell very well in Texas, and scattershot everywhere else.
Tim Powers has a love affair with pre-talkie Hollywood that shines through in a lot of his books.
Something about New Orleans is tickling the tip of my brain, but I can’t come up with it.
Well, on a totally different continent, D. E. Stevenson exhibited regionalism in a number of her books that were set, at least partly, in Scotland. There are a couple of other mid-century English writers who had a lot of the same Scottish tropes. One of the tropes is that there’s always a scene where everybody dances. My sister pointed out that trope appeared even in Downton Abbey when the family is in Scotland and the maid dances.
O. Douglas (who was also John Buchan’s sister) wrote a whole book about India that was nothing but *regionalism/English ideas about India* wrapped around a marriage proposal. Very odd.