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I hope you'll consider featuring Puget Sound writer Karen Fisher and her magnificent 2005 novel A Sudden Country, a hypnotic and revelatory opus about the Oregon Trail. A finalist alongside E.L. Doctorow's The March for the Pen/Faulkner award, A Sudden Country (the author's debut and only book to date) is refreshingly, uncompromisingly complex in its handle of history and in its depiction of human beings as they reckon with unforgiving landscape and cling to hope amid bitter circumstance. This book merits the attention and appreciation of anybody who cares about Northwest history -- or American history for that matter. And it merits thanks from any reader who longs for a near-perfect contemporary novel.

posted 3 years, 11 months ago
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