10. Stories from the Country of Lost Borders by Mary Hunter Austin (1987, 309 pages, read Feb 15 - 26)
Edited by Marjorie Pryse
American Women Writers Series

This is two collections of stories, along with an introduction. The collections are The Land of Little Rain, published in 1903, and Lost Borders published in 1909. The stories within each collection are linked together by location, the California desert, and form an cohesive whole. They are presented as if nonfictional, but without any indication that they are anything but fiction.

This was a rediscovery of sorts published within the American Women Writers Series (in 1987). I haven't heard of Mary Hunter Austin outside of this book and I doubt she is all that well known today. Austin spent her young adulthood in the deserts of California, in the vicinity of Death Valley, and that region is the focus of both collections.

The Land of Little Rain

"You get the very spirit of the meaning of that country when you see Little Pete feeding his sheep in the red, choked maw of an old {volcanic} vent―a kind of silly pastoral gentleness that glozes over an elemental violence"

Austin came across to me as something like an Edward Abbey of early 20th-century. Independent and bohemian when these things were anathema for women socially, she apparently was a strong and egocentric personality, and it comes out in her writing. Most of these stories are extensive natural descriptions with numerous plants described, often beautifully and sometimes in strikingly memorable ways. But her most interesting stories to me were the three or four focused on people, with my favorite being a chapter on The Pocket Hunter, a pleasant loner endlessly looking for pockets of preciously stones to find, and who seems to have become one with the desert. "The Pocket Hunter had gotten to the point where he knew no bad weather, and all places were equally happy so long as they were out of doors. I do not know just how long it takes to become saturated with the elements so that one takes no account of them."

The natural descriptions were interesting, and carefully done, but also a bit tedious. My overall feeling on reading this was that I was glad to have experienced it. It clearly has value, but I didn't love reading it.

Lost Borders
I expected more from Lost Borders because I knew from the introduction that all the stories are about people. So, I was disappointed when the first several were not terribly engaging. But they accumulated and then I reached The Fakir where the narrator brings herself into the story, and exposes herself. Encountering a neighboring housewife's adultery, she finds herself momentarily bonding with the man, a complete rogue, and assists him in a critical way, helping him out of town and then helping to cover up the incident. And at some point during this she realizes she is being played by the player too, and she, briefly, ponders why and how, maybe stunned at her own vulnerability. Her otherwise pervasive confidence stumbles openly. It's a striking moment. And, after this every story seemed to have some extra and bigger complexity, coming out of the book and extending a long way. These stories could have been written today, if that desert culture were still in existence.

Just because it's on mind, I'll add that the collection ends with a story on the Walking Woman, who lost her name and wanders seemingly endlessly and unmolested through a desert only populated, sparsely, by lonely men. The narrator finally catches up with the woman and is given a story you might not expect and presented in such a wonderfully unhindered way - and leaves us pondering what women give up to live in society and who would they be if they could shed it all like the Walking Woman.

Overall, I'm glad I read the first collection, and moved in a literary way by the second collection. A bit of gem. I picked this up randomly off my shelves and it turned into a nice find.

To read in the context of my 2014 LT thread go to post 246 here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/163456#4584819 ( )