Stories from the Country of Lost Borders by Mary Austin / Edition 1

by Marjorie Pryse

Overview

Mary Austin's The Land of Little Rain (1903) and Lost Borders (1909), both set in the California desert, make intimate connections between animals, people, and the land they inhabit. For Austin, the two indispensable conditions of her fiction were that the region must enter the story "as another character, as the instigator of plot," and that the story must reflect "the essential qualities of the land."

In The Land of Little Rain, Austin's attention to natural detail allows her to write prose that is geologically, biologically, and botanically accurate at the same time that it offers metaphorical insight into human emotional and spiritual experience. In Lost Borders, Austin focuses on both white and Indian women's experiences in the desert, looks for the sources of their deprivation, and finds them in the ways life betrays them, usually in the guise of men. She offers several portraits of strong women characters but ultimately identifies herself with the desert, which she personifies as a woman.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813512181
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	04/01/1987
Series:	American Women Writers
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Austin came to California in 1887 to homestead with her family in Kern County, in the Great Central Valley. She is the author of many novels, essays, and story collections.
 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Notes to Introduction
Selected Bibliography
A Note on the Texts
The Land of Little Rain
Lost Borders
Glossary of Spanish and Indian Terms