The best books with a strong sense of place (and a little magic)

Mink River is a novel of optimism and joy.

Set in a small, coastal Oregon town, this lyrical novel follows an intimate cast of characters as the history and lore of their town intertwines with their lives. Each character has their own struggles and joys and their own story to tell.

The cast includes two aging best friends at the Public Works Department, a twelve-year-old boy who rides bikes and reads Irish history, a doctor who talks little but smokes often, and a philosophizing crow who hangs out with a mechanic. Doyle expresses such love and empathy for his characters.

To Doyle, everything matters: each character, each story, every tree, every choice. It’s the most beautiful novel I’ve ever read. 

The Bear and the Nightingale expertly intertwines folklore into the real world.

Set at the edge of medieval Russia, Arden infuses the novel with fairy tales and folklore told by the hearth. After her mother dies, Vasilisa’s father returns with a new wife from the city. She quickly forbids Vasilisa and her grandmother from honoring the old spirits or sharing legends of the forest. But as omens start to befall the town, Vasilisa realizes the old stories are more than just fables; they hold truth.

Arden uses history, lore, and cold winter nights to create such a strong sense of place. I frequently thought of this novel as I weaved Irish folklore into my own. Arden has made her world so dense and alive by filling it with centuries of history and allowing the reader to decide what is real and worth believing. 

Exit West follows a young couple who must escape their war-torn Middle Eastern city and find refuge somewhere on this shrinking planet.

The couple loses their sense of home while their home loses its history. Hamid writes with a detached intimacy, like from the viewpoint of a drone, the kind that bombed Nadia and Sayed's city, as it hovers over the couple during their most challenging and intimate moments.

Still, while they leave everything they know, Nadia and Sayed find home in each other. Hamid crafts a sense of place not bound to one location, but to two hearts. As the couple tries to locate doors that open to refuge sites around the world, we never truly leave the destruction of their home city.

Beautiful in its simplicity, Exit West is a powerful novel by my current favorite author.

Perhaps no other novel falls as perfectly into both the categories of historical fiction and fairy tale.

Set in 1920s Alaska, The Snow Child follows Jack and Mabel as their relationship slowly dissolves, in part because of their inability to have children. They soon notice a young girl hunting with a fox near their home. She appears to somehow survive the Alaskan winter on her own. They slowly begin to consider tales of the region and discover who the girl may be.

Ivey depicts the struggles of homesteading in Alaska as well as the despair of being barren. From the beginning, I felt for the characters emotionally while I became absorbed in the mystery and lore of the wild girl in the wilderness. 

Gentle, soft, and full of humor, This is Happiness is told through the narration of a 78-year-old seminarian dropout in Ireland circa 1920.

The story is an oral history of a fictional town as modern ideas of electricity begin to arrive. Niall Williams writes with some of the most gorgeous prose I’ve ever read about Ireland's weather and landscape. He takes time to linger on small, intimate moments of his characters from teenage embarrassments to first loves to visiting your grandparents.

Williams creates a fictional town that is so real and hopeful despite being so "behind the times." Williams argues that every life has a story and our greatest joys are those framed in sorrow. This book was such an inspiration for my first novel that I named a character Niall after the author of this lovely novel.

Every time I am reminded of This is Happiness, a smile comes to my face.