Inland: A Novel

I took the opportunity during the pandemic to revisit some of the episodes of "Have Gun Will Travel", a 1950 television western I loved when I was young. Among these episodes, was "The Great Mohave Chase" from 1957. Paladin has come into an unusual resource -- a camel surplussed by the United States Army -- which he uses to win a bet and to bring water to a parched California town. The show aptly makes use of the Army's failed effort in the 1850s and 60s to use camels in patrolling the deserts.Tea Obrecht's 2019 novel "Inland" involves the Army's use of camels to a much greater degree than the show on the exploits of Paladin. An immigrant from the former Yugoslavia, Obrecht carries on a tradition of non-native born Americans becoming fascinated with the uniquely American genre of the Western and making valuable contributions to it. Among other sources, this tradition includes Puccini's opera, "The Girl of the Golden West" the "Spaghetti Westerns" on film, and the western novels of the German writer, Karl May. Obrecht's "Inland" is a worthy contribution to the literature of the American West and shows the potential for depth and varied interpretation in this frequently slighted genre.Obrecht weaves together two stories. The first involves the Army's experiment with camels. The story soon breaks off from the arrival of the camels in San Antonio to focus on a single camel and its rogue rider with a criminal past. The rider is a killer named Lurie who runs away from the Army camel procession when he is pursued by a sheriff who knows his unsavory history. Lurie recounts most of his story while talking to his camel mount, Burke, to whom he becomes greatly attached.Obrecht's second story is set in the Arizona Territory in 1893 in the small, fictitious homesteader community of Amargo. It centers around a tough, persistent family, the Larks, including Nora, her husband Emmett, the couple's three sons and their daughter who died in infancy, an aged grandmother and a young woman related to Emmett, Josie, who works as a domestic, and is able to communicate with the dead through seances. The story of Amargo involves a lengthy drought, a conflict between the longstanding homesteaders and the cattle barons in the adjacent community for control of the county and the track towards statehood, and difficult personal issues arising in part from the harshness and loneliness of life in the developing community.The two stories are told in lengthy alternating sections and for the most part are seemingly separate until Obrecht brings them together in the latter part of the book. Each story has a detailed complex texture with many characters and sub-stories. The author offers a broad portrait of the American West both in its beauty, expanse, and harshness. Her perspective is gritty and hard but also verges on the mystical. I felt the book showed a love and understanding of the West and of the United States with all their challenges, a critical quality for a Western. In its combination of the realistic and the mystical a perspective sometimes called "magic realism" I was reminded of a wonderful National Book Award winning novel, "Sing Unburied Sing" by Jesmyn Ward. which is set in Mississippi and also explores spirituality and realism.The writing sometimes flags but is often beautiful. The author shows a gift for quotable aphorisms. that bring out the meaning of the story better than the lengthy chapters. For example, here is a portion of a discussion between Lurie and a fellow camel driver."There are wounds of time and there are wounds of person, [Lurie]. Sometimes people come through their wounds, but time does not. Sometimes it's the other way around. Sometimes the wounds are so grievous, there's no coming through them at all.""Why not?""Because man is only man. And god, in His infinite wisdom, made it so that to live, generally is to wound another. And He made very man blind to his own weapons, and too short-living to do anything but guard jealously his own small, wasted way. And thus we go on."The book has its flaws. It is long in terms of number of pages and its density makes it feel much longer. The two stories are ultimately not fully integrated. The long lengths of the chapters with no apparent connection between the stories makes the novel difficult to follow. The details and side stories were frequently evocative but they were also distracting and confusing.With the book's difficulties, I was glad to find this work. I have become attracted to the Western in recent years, and Obrecht's book carries on and adds to a venerable tradition. There is much more to the best works in the genre than violence and shoot-outs.The Library of America has recently published a volume "The Western: Four Novels from the 1940s and 50s" that might interest readers wanting to explore classic works in the genre. On of the works in the collection is "Warlock" a 1958 novel by Oakley Hall. "Warlock" is set in the Arizona Territory in the early 1880s about ten years before "Inland" and involves some of the same issues, including the conflict between ranchers and townspeople and conflicts between adjacent communities going different ways. The book includes a character loosely based on Wyatt Earp, but it doesn't include camels. It is also a dense, thoughtful work. Readers fascinated by "Inland" might be interested in "Warlock" or in other classic American Westerns.Robin Friedman

Inland traces the stories of two people, Nora and Lurie/Misafir. The stories are separate until they come together with no apparent connection except physical and perhaps strained metaphorical at the end of the book. There is some lovely writing, and the subject matter is fascinating, reminding us all that we have no operating definition of hardscrabble in our lives. It was to me an interesting, uneven mixture of fine descriptive writing, literary overreach, and mistakes in technique.Well, technique mistakes is perhaps overreach. Maybe more like thumbs in the eye of the reader, who might prefer to be able to follow a storyline, might want to be able to connect the backstory that moves from time to time and place to place without confusion. It’s just that Obreht violates a lot of rules, probably on purpose (for ‘literary effect’). I get the impression from glowing reviews in respected journals that I, as a pedestrian reader, should understand Obreht’s higher purpose and not wish for an organizing story line and clear language.The book reaches far into the well of literary fiction. It is deeply descriptive of emotions and places, often beautifully rendered. But sometimes they are laid out in such excruciating detail that the reader wonders if the story will ever move forward. Usually, well-written characters are distinguished by unique voices. In Inland, Emmett, Nora, uneducated Josie, the sheriff have approximately the same voice: the elevated diction of the (imagined) nineteenth century with some ain’ts thrown in … effectively the same voice as that of the narrator. It’s one thing to use figurative language, which Obreht does all the time. It’s another to redefine words to your own taste because they must sound good to you. “I lay there bellied while Mico drowned in blood.” I guess I see what that might mean. “One suspender ligating his arm.” I think I may see that, but the unnecessary surgical term seems to indicate Emmett might soon lose that arm. “Its ribs were bilged by a cinch” is off the rails redefinition, kind of like calling strawberry shortcake an anvil. Usually, florid language like that covers weak writing. Obreht is a good writer, so one wonders why she does this. The odd lapses are offset by wonderful passages: “…talking on Mico, his impatience and boldness and bad taste in jokes, the way he fussed over his clothes, until our hearts were full of him.”Too much convention becomes cliché and the writing becomes banal. Too little leaves the reader swinging in the wind. I was in the wind often.As far as plot goes, the story of Misafir and the camel corps moves along. Nora’s story is rooted in her mind and moves almost not at all. There are improbabilities: Sheriff has a compound fracture of the leg, drinks whiskey and continues to converse in faux-19th Century language. Shortly thereafter, with people in the house in extremis, Emmett’s former associate, Crace, knocks out several thousand words of backstory. And that dilatory slow drag through thought process at the height of action is occasionally excruciating: “She went for the shotgun behind the door.” Seven paragraphs later, she doesn’t shoot. Then finally, 40 pages from the end, the two stories tie together. Burke the camel appears to the wondering eyes of Nora … and then we get a confusing, ripped out of sequence digression from what turns out to be the ghost of Misifir. Some marvelous writing, though.

Beautifully written, suspenseful, keep my interest to the very end. Beautifully evoked that time and place.

This was one of the best books I have ever read!

This is a long, hard read and there’s little reward for the effort. Two stories that sort of meet toward the end. One, a simple story of 19th century life in new territories and the other, a self-indulgently written introduction (for most of us) to the existence of the camel Corps and its duties. The spiritual and folkloric lives of many of the characters is explored over and over and over again. I found the prose meandering and repetitive. Not terrible but close!

Wonderful book. I had previously read her other book, The Tiger's Wife, and loved that so when I saw that she had written another novel I preordered it and wasn't disappointed. Completely different from her first book but just as enjoyable and tells you things about mid nineteenth century America you don't see in the movies.

Great interlinking storyline.