Finding a Sense of Place in Fiction

Heat waves shimmer on a Georgia highway. A glacier on the coast of Greenland offers mystery and danger. The best novels not only feature memorable characters but also present vividly depicted settings that give readers a strong sense of place. So book yourself on a flight of fancy to another time and world with the following titles.

Frances Mayes, whose popular travel memoirs (Under the Tuscan Sun; Bella Tuscany ) introduced readers to the sensuous charms of Italy, evokes the intricacies of small-town Southern life in her first novel, SWAN (Broadway. 2002. 0-7679-0285-8. $25). Swan, GA, is a close-knit community where everyone knows everyone and family money goes back generations. Since childhood, the stigma of their mother's suicide has haunted Ginger and her brother, J.J. Now 16 years later, when their mother's body is mysteriously exhumed, they finally discover and come to terms with the true cause of her death.

For 14-year-old Susie Salmon, heaven is a real place, as real as the earth she once inhabited. Alice Sebold's moving THE LOVELY BONES (Little, Brown. 2002. 0-316-66634-3. $21.95; pap. 2003. 0-316-17027-0. $7.99) opens with Susie describing her rape and murder by a reclusive neighbor in a suburban cornfield. Looking down from her personal heaven, she watches compassionately as her grieving family and friends struggle to carry on with life.

A failing New England mill town dominates Richard Russo's Pulitzer Prize–winning EMPIRE FALLS (Knopf. 2001. 0-679-43247-7. $25.95; pap. Vintage. 2002. 0-375-72640-3. $14.95). Abandoned factories flank the diner where Miles Roby observes the goings-on of his community while trying to come to terms with his ex-wife, daughter, and new girlfriend. Mrs. Whiting, Miles's employer, complains, "[N]ow the river's gone back to doing what it wants, and what it wants is to wash up dead animals and all manner of trash on my nice lawn. That's the lovely odor you noticed when you sat down. Which is my point. Lives are rivers. We imagine we can direct their paths though in the end there's but one destination, and we end up being true to ourselves because we have no choice."

Sandra Cisneros's CARAMELO (Knopf. 2002. 0-679-43554-9. $24; pap. Vintage. 2003. 0-679-74258-1. $13.95) sits readers in the back seat of the Reyes family station wagon as they travel from Chicago to Mexico City for the annual summer visit with relatives. At the heart of this lively multigenerational family saga is young Celaya, who inherits the family stories and a silk rebozo (or shawl) from her despotic grandmother. "La Divine Providencia is the most imaginative writer. Plot lines convolute and spiral, lives intertwine, coincidences collide, seemingly random happenings are laced with knots, figure eights and double loops, designs more intricate than the fringe of the silk rebozo."

The Arctic Circle forms the chilly backdrop of Peter Høeg's SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW (Delta. 1995. 0-385-31514-7. pap. $12.95). Smilla Jesperson, an Inuit/Greenlander living in Copenhagen and an authority on the properties of glacial snow and ice, sets out to solve the mysterious death of a neighbor's child. Six-year-old Isaiah's fall from the roof is ruled an accident, but Smilla knows he was afraid of heights. She endures danger and physical harm as she struggles against the harsh elements of Greenland's icy landscape to solve this riddle.

Annie Proulx's Pulitzer Prize–winning THE SHIPPING NEWS (Scribner. 1999. 0-684-85791-X. $25; pap. 1994. 0-671-51005-3. $14) is set in bleak, wind-swept Newfoundland. Moving back to the province after the death of his wife, Quoyle, a dockside reporter for the local paper, slowly adapts to the climate and the quirky characters of his ancestral home. As he finds his purpose in life, his aunt and daughters come to terms with their own losses and trauma.

THE BUFFALO SOLDIER by Chris Bohjalian (Crown. 2002. 0-609-60833-9. $25; pap. Vintage. 2003. 0-375-72546-6. $13.95) is the story of the aftermath of a tragedy in small-town Vermont. Laura and Terry Sheldon lose their twin daughters when the river that divides their town pours over its banks. Two years later the couple decide to adopt, and a young black boy named Alfred is placed with them. Neighbor Paul Hebert befriends him and teaches him how to ride. Alfred and his horse become unlikely heroes in a unique chain of events that mirrors the earlier tragedy.

The windblown plains of the American West come alive in Larry Watson's MONTANA 1948 (Pocket. 1995. 0-671-50703-6. pap. $12.95), a story about family loyalties, violation of trust, and the politics of legacy government. The narrator, the 12-year-old son of the local sheriff, observes as the adults in his world collide when his father must arrest his own brother, a doctor who has been molesting his female patients.

Mary Kay Andrews's SAVANNAH BLUES (HarperCollins. 2001. 0-06-019958-X. $24.95; pap. Perennial. 2003. 0-06-051913-4. $13.95) takes readers on an entertaining tour of Southern society from Tybee Island to Savannah's finest dining rooms. Eloise "Weezie" Foley is an antiques "picker," sifting through estate sales and dumpsters to find items to sell to dealers. Her quest for the Moses Weed cupboard, an outstanding example of historic cabinetry, lands her in hot water when she is implicated in the murder of her ex-husband's new girlfriend.