I love maps, and I love books. The writer Susan Straight has combined the two in a most ambitious project: over the course of five years, she read novels set in America, with the goal of designing a map where she could plot each of those books. When she decided to include a novel, she reached out to the author to ask them to define where the heart of their novel lived. Her goal was to map 1,001 novels, in a nod to Scheherazade and “The Arabian Nights.”
This project—featured in the LA Times and built in Esri—is astounding. It is one I know I will return to again and again. I have already spent countless hours getting lost in the project, in awe of what Straight has built.
1,001 novels is an overwhelming number, but the project is broken into eleven geographic areas—or kingdoms, as Straight calls them—to break it down into smaller sections. I find even the ways that she decided to group the novels and the names that she gave the areas to be illuminating. I love, for example, that New York and New Jersey are coupled together, as are California and Hawaii. What an accurate and lyrical description of the latter two states: golden dreams and sapphire waves. Makes me want to jump on a plane and visit. But instead, I can read one of the 150 books that live there.
Here are the eleven categories:
Pointed Firs, Granite Coves and Revolution
Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode IslandEmpire State and Atlantic Shores
New York and New JerseyCapes and Tidewaters, Shifting Coasts and Capitals
District of Columbia, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina and South CarolinaMountain Home and Hollows, Smokies and Ozarks
Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia and PennsylvaniaBlues and Bayous, Deltas and Coasts
Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and FloridaIn the Heart of the Heart of the Country
Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and OhioHigh and Lonesome Songs: Prairies and Mountains
Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado and NebraskaBig Skies, Red Earth and Lone Stars
Kansas, Oklahoma and TexasEnchanted Deserts and Coyote Canyons
Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and UtahForest and Totem, Sea and Mountain: The Great Northwest
Alaska, Oregon, Washington and IdahoGolden Dreams and Sapphire Waves
California and Hawaii
Straight provides a summary of each category, highlighting a number of the books and often connecting them to her personal history. Within each category, each book can be found on the map and Straight includes a small synopsis as well. You could click through on the map to the synopsis or you can see all the books and then see where they live on the map as you scroll.
I first dove into “Pointed Firs, Granite Coves and Revolution,” because Straight kindly included my novel there, placing it in Massachusetts. The heart of the book is there, and it is also in Maine, and my heart lies in Massachusetts and Maine as well.
As I read through the list of books, there were, of course, old favorites—Little Women, Evening, Olive Kitteridge, Revolutionary Road, The Good Thief—and newer favorites, too—Night of the Living Rez, Agatha of Little Neon, On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous—but there were also many books I have never read. Next up on my TBR list: Unravelling by Elizabeth Graver, set in Lowell; The Northern Reach by W.S. Winslow, in Waldoboro, Maine; The Beans of Egypt, Maine by Carolyn Chute.
There are so many ways to use this marvelous project. It opens up the possibilities of reading through the lens of place, rather than that of plot or character. Choose a kingdom and work your way through it. Zoom in closer to narrow your choices. Open up the map and randomly click on a dot, vowing to read whichever book you have chosen. If you’re visiting a different part of the country, pick a book or two to read while you’re there. Send a friend a book from their home state or their current state. Read two vastly different books that live in the same spot (looking at you, Iron Shoes by Molly Giles and Ordinary Money by Louis B. Jones). For books that have multiple settings, consider why a book is located in its particular spot. Or you could choose a book at random from each kingdom and read one a month—in under a year, you will have traveled across the entire country.
As with any list, you may find that some of your favorites aren’t here. Every list is subjective. So supplement the list with the books you love.
By asking each author where the heart of their book resides, Susan Straight has created a living and breathing library of books. It reminds me of what Yiyun Li said, years ago, that “one writes stories so they could go out and talk to other stories.” Now we have a map of our country, books talking to other books in ways we haven’t seen before. This is a marvelous resource, one that I know I will use for a very long time.