
Editors’ Favorite Books of the West
Indulge in a little armchair travel with our favorite books set in the West.

Wolf Willow By Wallace Stegner (1962) “Sometimes you have to read a book twice to realize how good it is. As a Wallace Stegner fan—his novel, Angle of Repose, is on my top-ten-books-of-all-time list—I had read Wolf Willow years ago and liked it, but maybe didn’t love it. This time around, I loved it. It’s a memoir of Stegner’s childhood in the early 1900s, a portrait of a tiny farm town on the prairie near the Saskatchewan-Montana border and a portrait of Stegner’s struggling family, led by an angry, hard-drinking, sometimes brutal father. It’s a book about how you can love a place and hate it at the same time, and how with luck you can forgive, a little, people who don’t deserve it. It’s a beautiful, haunting book.” —Peter Fish, Deputy Travel Editor
Where’d You Go Bernadette By Maria Semple (2012) “When I read Where’d You Go Bernadette, I had just moved to the West Coast. Bernadette was my deep dive into the West’s strange (and endearing) brand of earnestness. As Bernadette’s husband and daughter in Seattle wonder where she’s disappeared to, I laughed and laughed at the cultural send-ups. It’s part satire, part mystery, part tear-inducing family portrait, and worth abandoning all other duties to read it.” —Joanna Linberg, Home Editor
On the Road By Jack Kerouac (1957) “Kerouac’s exuberant, poetic novel chronicles the adventures of a pair of young friends, who hitchhike across the country (to Denver, San Francisco, and beyond), “mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, and desirous of everything at the same time.” Written in three weeks, it’s a portrait of a generation, of a time, and of the West. A revelation.”—Megan McCrea, Assistant Travel Editor
Snow Falling on Cedars By David Guterson (1994) “To summarize this novel as a murder mystery would be reductive, but it supplies an engaging hook for a plot that delves into the history of an island in the Puget Sound. It’s also a complicated love story and a poignant examination of anti Japanese-American sentiments following WWII and how racism can crumble the foundations of a tight-knit community. One of my favorite novels, period.” —Jessica Mordo, Deputy Digital Editor