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Audiobook edition · 4 h 0 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the desert is not empty, but a country whose signs you have yet to learn?
In The Land of Little Rain, Mary Austin explores eastern California through short sketches of its land, creatures, and people. Between the Sierra Nevada and the hot basins to the east, she follows water through a dry world of high canyons, salt flats, old trails, and small towns.
Austin watches animals find their paths and plants wait years for rain. She meets prospectors, solitary walkers, and Seyavi, a Paiute basket maker who supports herself and her son. These encounters reveal how people live within the land's limits, and how patient attention makes a seemingly barren country come alive.
What you’ll discover
- Water shapes the country Follow the water that connects mountain snowfields, dry valleys, animal trails, and small settlements.
- Life in dry places Watch birds clean the plain and discover plants that wait years for rain.
- People rooted in place Meet Seyavi, whose basket making and knowledge bring you closer to the country she inhabits.
- Gold seekers and walkers Follow a prospector searching for small gold deposits and encounter a woman who walks alone.
- The pleasure of looking Slow down with sketches that invite you to notice the desert's own rules and rhythms.
Who will love it
For readers who love close observation of nature, the American West, or short essays that can be read one at a time. Meet desert creatures, prospectors and basket makers in a landscape shaped by water.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Water, not rain, defines the desert
- The mountains are streets of water
- Animals follow trails to water and to the dead
- Seekers and settlers bend to the land
- Native women and walkers hold deep knowledge
- A country worth knowing and keeping
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- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Read and hear La tierra de la poca lluvia in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
La tierra de la poca lluvia
by Mary Austin · 1903
Mary Austin follows desert trails to springs, revealing how water shapes the lives of plants, animals and people.
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In short
The Land of Little Rain is a book of sketches about the dry country of eastern California. Mary Austin published it in 1903, after living for years in the Owens Valley, on the dry side of the Sierra Nevada.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Water, not rain, defines the desert
Austin opens by marking out her country. It lies between the high Sierra Nevada and the hot basins to the east, reaching toward Death Valley and the Mojave. She argues that you cannot understand it by the number of storms it gets, because they are few. You understand it by where the water lies and how every living thing arranges itself around that fact.
She describes how plants are spaced far apart, each with its own patch of ground, as if they had agreed not to crowd one another. Their roots search wide for moisture. Their leaves are small, gray or waxy, built to lose as little as possible. Austin sees in this a kind of order. The desert looks bare to a hurried traveler, but to a patient one it is carefully managed by the plants that live there.
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What is The Land of Little Rain about?
It is a collection of sketches about the dry country of eastern California, between the Sierra Nevada and Death Valley. Austin describes its water, plants, animals, weather and the people who live there, from prospectors to native basket makers.
When was The Land of Little Rain written?
Mary Austin published it in 1903, after living in the Owens Valley. It is nonfiction based on her own experience and observation, though written in a literary style, with sketches of real places and the kinds of people she met.
Is The Land of Little Rain a novel?
No. It is a series of linked essays and sketches, often grouped as nature writing. There is no single plot, so you can read the chapters in order or one at a time, as your interest leads.
The author
Mary Austin
1868–1934 · American novelist and essayist
Memoirist, novelist, poet, essayist, critic, playwright.
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