Stories from the Country of Lost Borders by Mary Austin

by Marjorie Pryse (Editor)

Mary Austin's The Land of Little Rain (1903) and Lost Borders (1909), both set in the California desert, make intimate connections between animals, people, and the land they inhabit. For Austin, the two indispensable conditions of her fiction were that the region must enter the story "as another character, as the instigator of plot," and that the story must reflect "the essential qualities of the land."

In The Land of Little Rain , Austin's attention to natural detail allows her to write prose that is geologically, biologically, and botanically accurate at the same time that it offers metaphorical insight into human emotional and spiritual experience. In Lost Borders , Austin focuses on both white and Indian women's experiences in the desert, looks for the sources of their deprivation, and finds them in the ways life betrays them, usually in the guise of men. She offers several portraits of strong women characters but ultimately identifies herself with the desert, which she personifies as a woman.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Read For School

312 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1987

Reviews

[Daniel Chaikin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two collections of what I think are essays, along with an introduction. The two collections are The Land of Little Rain, published in 1903, and Lost Borders published in 1909. The essays within each collection are linked together form an cohesive whole. They are presented as if nonfictional, but without any indication that they are anything but fiction.

This was a rediscovery of sorts published within the American Women Writers Series (in 1987). I haven't heard of Mary Hunter Austin outside of this book and I doubt she is known my many people today. Austin spent her young adulthood in the deserts of California, in the vicinity of Death Valley and that region is the focus of both collections.

The Land of Little Rain
Austin came across to me as something like an Edward Abbey of early 20th-century. Independent and bohemian when these things were anathema for women socially, she apparently was a strong and egocentric personality, and it comes out in her writing. Most of these essays are extensive natural descriptions with endless plants described, often beautifully and sometimes in memorable ways. But her most interesting stories to me involved the few essays on people, with my favorite being a chapter on The Pocket Hunter, a pleasant loner looking for pockets of preciously stones to find, and who seems to have become one with the desert. The natural description were interesting but also a bit tedious. My overall feeling on reading this was that I was glad to have experienced it and to have carried this information on in my own way. It clearly has value, but I didn't love reading it.

Lost Borders
I was excited about Lost Borders because I knew from the introduction that all the essays are about people. So, I was disappointed when the first several stories were not terribly engaging. But they accumulated and then I stumbled across The Fakir and the narrator brings herself into the story, and exposes herself. Encountering a neighboring housewife's adultery, she finds herself helping to get the man out of town and cover up the incident. And at some point she realizes she is being played by the player too, and convinced to help and she ponders why and how, maybe stunned at her own vulnerability. Her otherwise pervasive confidence stumbles openly. It's a striking moment. And, after this every essay seemed to have some extra and bigger complexity, coming out of the book and extending a long way. These essays could have been written today, if that desert culture were still in existence.

Just because it's on mind, I'll add that the collection ends with an essay on the walking woman, who lost her name and wanders seemingly endlessly and unmolested through a desert only populated, sparsely, by lonely men. The narrator finally catches up with the woman and is given a story you might not expect and in presented in such a wonderfully unhindered way - and leaves us pondering what women give up to live in society and who would they be if they could shed it all like the walking woman.

Overall, I'm glad I read the first collection, and moved in a literary way the second collection. A bit of gem. I picked this up randomly off my shelves and it turned into a nice find.

[Humphrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review here is just for the second piece in this volume, Lost Borders: the first I've rated elsewhere. Lost Borders is fascinating, ranging from personal accounts to philosophic essays to stories. Austin's approach remains strikingly consistent across the pieces, blurring the borders of genre (and in so doing, the distinction between truth and falsehood) much as she blurs the lines dividing man from animal and corporeal from spiritual. Austin's style is excellent, capturing the sparseness of the landscape and the matter-of-factness of its inhabitants. Her use of narrative silence is particularly nuanced. The desert, Austin insists, forces people into contact with the most essential core of existence; at their best, these pieces do well at conveying this core in their combination of power and simplicity.

[Michael Welland · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't begin to describe how much reading I did for the research for the new book, 'The Desert: Lands of Lost Borders'. My discoveries, literary, geographical, historical, fiction and non-fiction, were endless and satisfying, but probably top of the list is Mary Austin. Until Edward Abbey, she was (in my opinion) unparalleled in the libraries of writing about the deserts and peoples of the American southwest. Her writing is luminous.

And the imagery of 'the country of lost borders' is so compelling, so provocative, that it became the subtitle of my book and a recurring theme.

[Lindsey Z · Rating 3 out of 5]

Austin's descriptions of the landscape are beautiful and lyrical. Her stories, for the most part, lack cohesion and I found myself getting lost and confused in terms of plot. Her collection is worth reading just for the way in which she writes and her firm understanding of man's connection to the land out West.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

I tried re-reading The Land of Little Rain and bailed, but then realized I never recorded the fact that I read this whole book for a class a long time ago, so I suppose it's not a total loss. I can't really add anything to the description of this book. All I can say is that it's not really my thing, all this "nature writing" business.

[David H · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mary is a prolific story teller and one can picture the Mojave Desert and the characters that inhabited it in the early part of the twentieth century. I particularly liked the Lost Borders part of the book, tales of miners, sheep herders, and adventurers all finding their little patches of freedom. My favorite piece in that section was called the Last Antelope, nature and man.

[Theresia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Things that this book reminds me of: my childhood, east of the nowhere land; spending a whole day on my feet in a Georgia O'Keeffe exhibition in Chi-Town, looking at her clouds and flowers and bones; and the mountain, always the mountain.

Things that this book wonderfully confirms: that we readers are faithful believers of Words.

[Daune · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exquisite account of the compelling rhythm and laws of nature versus the narrow minded laws and boundaries imposed by man. Austin's resolve to record so eloquently the habits of the nature world is remarkable. Nature is a wise and persuasive teacher to eager learners.