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'Inland' Creates A New Myth Of The Old West
Téa Obreht's new novel is set against a familiar old West backdrop, but it tells a fresh story of two people, both haunted in their own ways — a tough frontier woman and an immigrant camel driver.
The novelist Téa Obreht loves a challenge. Her bestselling debut, , wove modern Balkan history into fairy tale, then transformed fairy tale into reality, tigers and all. In her follow-up, , she makes her job even harder. is a Western, set in the drought-stricken Arizona Territory in 1893 and alternating between two familiar Western protagonists, a lovable outlaw named Lurie and a prickly frontierswoman named Nora. Familiar, too, is her raconteur-ish narrative style, which is loose and digressive, with occasional Spanish and a faint old-fashioned is a classic story, told in a classic way — and yet it feels wholly and unmistakably new.
