Books in the In Place series

These thirteen essays depict a woman coming to terms with her adoration for the wilds of the West and will resonate with all of us longing to better understand ourselves and our relationships to the places and people we love most.

An innovative, hybrid work of literary nonfiction, Lowest White Boy takes its title from Lyndon Johnson's observation during the civil rights era: "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket."

In this often-surprising book of essays, Krista Eastman explores the myths we make about who we are and where we are from. The Painted Forest upends easy narratives of place, embracing tentativeness and erasing boundaries.

Dramatizes a childhood split between Queens, New York, and Cyprus, an island nation with a long colonial history and a culture to which Joanna Eleftheriou could never quite adjust. The book avows a Greek-Cypriot-American lesbian's existence by documenting its scenes.

One day, Jesse Donaldson wakes up in Portland, Oregon, and asks his wife to uproot their life together and move to his native Kentucky. As he searches for the reason behind this sudden urge, Donaldson examines both the place where he was born and the life he's building.