Tuesday, April 9, 2013

The ten best small towns in books

Brad Tyer's new nonfiction book, Opportunity, Montana: Big Copper, Bad Water, and the Burial of an American Landscape, is about restored rivers, familial disappointment, and sacrificial landscapes.

For Publishers Weekly, Tyer tagged “'10 [Small Towns in Books] That Made An Impression On Me,' whether they treat a town where I’ve lived, a town I barely recognize from the off-ramp, or a town that exists nowhere but the map of some reader’s imagination," including:
The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry

Part 1 of what came to be a trilogy—with Texasville and Duane’s Depressed—centered on the fictional but thoroughly precedented town of Thalia, Texas. That’s not the suburban Texas I grew up in, but if I’ve seen that one-block town square and imagined that movie-house open for business once, I’ve seen and imagined it a thousand times. And it’s more alive today in McMurtry’s book than it will ever be again on actual Texas soil.
Read about the other entries on Tyer's list.

--Marshal Zeringue