Western Trails; A Collection of Short Stories by Mary Austin [Western Literature Series]

Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 1987. First Edition. As new/As new. [9.25x6.25in]; [8], 309 pp., index; Tan cloth backstrip and deep red cloth covers with black ink lettering on spine, all edges trimmed; Dust jacket light brown with color image of Indian baskets on front and black lettering on spine, insert of color illustration of Austin and black lettering, advertisements on back. Mary Hunter Austin (1868-1934) was an American writer of the Southwest in the first half of the 20th century. Her first book, The Land of Little Rain (1903) was, by many accounts, her best of the 35 books published. She was a story teller of life and nature on the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains of Owens Valley, the Inyo Mountains, Mojave Desert, Death Valley and Western Nevada. In Lawrence Clark Powell, California Classics, he writes "There in the county of Inyo she put down roots and absorbed the lore of the Paiute and Shoshone Indians and of the shepherds, ranchers and miners. With her feet on the earth and her head in the sky, she gave voice in singing prose to the soul of a hitherto unsung land." A newspaper critic at the time stated "What John Muir has done for the western slopes of the Sierras... Mrs. Austin does in a more tender and intimate fashion for the eastern slopes."

This selection of her stories, nonfiction and almost nonfiction, is a good example of western literature.