By Nat Heck, Area Manager
The Pacific Northwest, Washington State, and North Central Washington, specifically have a rich literary tradition. As a newcomer to the region, it has been a blast to dive headfirst into Washington’s best works of fiction. This literature has been a boon for my understanding of the state and its culture.
When focusing on a particular region in any art form, you can often determine how the sense of place impacts creators and their art. In literature, this is often reflected in setting, the personification of place, and overall tone. For some regions, this impact is minimal, but I think you and I both know that the mind-bogglingly diverse landscape of Washington has a strong influence on writers working in the state.
For this list, we have unique settings from across the great state of Washington, including Okanogan, Seattle, Soap Lake, and Northeast Washington, utilized in a variety of genres, including memoir, horror, thriller, and mystery, to great effect. Whether it’s panic in a crowd in Seattle or the scorching sun of Soap lake, I’m confident this list has something for you.
From June 6th through August 15th, I invite you to join NCW Libraries’ staff and patrons throughout North Central Washington in our annual Summer Library Program! To get you started, check out some of our staff suggestions for our fourth theme: Regional Authors.
So Far Gone by Jess Walter (available in print, large print, ebook, and eaudiobook)
Following a family implosion around politics immediately following the 2016 election, Rhys Kinnick forsakes the world and retreats to a secluded cabin in Northeast Washington. Years later, when his grandchildren arrive at his cabin unexpectedly, he takes the children in to protect them from their father, who has joined a Christian Nationalist militia. But their father will not let them out that easily, and Rhys must work with a cast of unlikely allies to save his grandchildren after they are kidnapped by the militia.
Sky Ranch: Reared in the High Country by Linda Lockwood (available in print and ebook)
In this memoir, we follow Linda Lockwood, who moved to Okanogan at eight years old. She quickly took to the life of a rancher on her family’s land and had a particular aptitude for training horses. There’s a darkness hanging over Lockwood and her family, though, in the form of her mother’s mental illness. As Linda marries and becomes pregnant at age 25, her mother is lost to suicide, and Linda enters an intense period of loss and reflection on previous trauma.
Listen to Your Sister by Neena Viel (available in print)
A knotty speculative horror debut from the point of view of three siblings, Neena Viel explores the lengths siblings will go to in order to protect each other and the ramifications of that protection. Since taking guardianship of her younger brother, Calla’s life has increasingly been monopolized by the need to clean up her sixteen-year-old brother’s messes. The middle brother, Dre, is well intentioned but cannot be counted on. When a protest against racial injustice goes horribly awry, the three siblings find their lives turned upside down as they struggle to stay afloat and grapple with decades of buried pain, grievances, and love. Perfect for most modern horror fans.
Midnight in Soap Lake by Matthew Sullivan (available in print, large print, ebook, eaudiobook and Lucky Day collection)
Newlywed Abigail gave up her life in Denver to move with her husband, Eli, to Soap Lake, Washington, for his grant funded research of the eponymous Soap Lake, due to its unique mineral content. Eli is called to Poland for another research opportunity, leaving Abigail in a strange town with a strange cast of characters and an even stranger mystery. As she’s walking through the desert, Abigail finds a young child and, unfortunately, his murdered mother. Esme, who was from Soap Lake, had skipped town the night of her graduation nearly a decade before and had not been seen in Soap Lake until her body was found. Told in dual timelines by Abigail in the present and teen Esme in the 2000s and 2010s, Sullivan builds a complex web of characters, plot strands, and local mythology in this small-town thriller.
English