“Inland” by Téa Obreht – The Capricious Winds of Arizona

Téa Obreht has done no small work in living up to the various awards and nominations she has received so far, just publishing her second novel titled Inland. It tells two stories taking place in the dry lands of 1893 Arizona.

The first one follows Nora, a frontierswoman who awaits the return of her husband, gone to look for water, and her elder sons who disappeared after an argument.

The second follows Lurie, an outlaw on the run who is forced to take up military service and ends up on a journey for the ages.

Téa Obreht Explores the Dry Lands

With all of our technological comforts and luxuries, it becomes a little too easy to forget just how fast the world has had to evolve in the past couple of centuries to make it possible. Going back only a couple of decades, we would witness the disappearance of a large chunk of technology we use on a daily basis and take for granted.

If we go back just over a hundred years, it almost feels like travelling to an entirely different planet whose people barely seem like they resemble us. In Téa Obreht's Inland, we go back as far as 1893 in Arizona, where life may as well have been a figment of our imagination at this stage.

The story, a dual-narrative, begins by presenting us with Nora, a tough frontierswoman whose luck has been on the downswing lately. Her husband has gone to try and find some water in the midst of a drought, while her elder sons have both disappeared after a very heated argument.

She is left with the younger son who lost an eye in an accident and believes a monster is prowling the property, a cousin who speaks with the dead, and her mother-in-law, bound to a wheelchair. It ought to be mentioned, Nora also converses with the dead, namely her daughter who passed away years ago.

The second story follows a Turkish immigrant, Lurie, who was essentially forced down a path of the outlaw by his terrible childhood. On the run from the government, he sees himself forced to take refuge in the military, eventually ending up in the experimental unit of the United States Camel Corps.

Haunted by his own fair share of past mistakes and demons, Lurie trudges onward into the unknown, completely oblivious to the many twists which lay in store for him, and the one encounter which will ultimately change is life.

An Image of the South in Inland

It seems recently stories taking place in the Old American West have had a bit of a resurgence, both in literature and television... and frankly I'm all for it. Not everyone is capable of conveying the harsh and unforgiving nature of such an environment, but when someone succeeds like Téa Obreht has in Inland, the results are truly exceptional.

Her prose is smooth, detailed and evocative, the kind which allows us to close our eyes and picture ourselves there. The arid wilds feel deadly and oppressive, showcasing the lethal power nature holds over man.

Needless to say, even in 1893 Arizona wasn't all desert and bushes; it was already defined back then by the people inhabiting it as well. While the nature of our narratives doesn't exactly allow the author to deviate into secondary characters and explore them in great detail, we still get an interesting enough look at the passers-by and the few people our protagonists become closer with.

While personally I cannot vouch for the type of people who lived there back then, I can say with certainty the ones the author created completely fit in the story she is telling.

If there are a couple of things we do get a precise look into, it's family dynamics among frontier settlers and the United States Army of those times. Starting with the former, we are privy to Nora's many interactions with her various family members as well as her values and priorities, painting some rather interesting pictures of how people used to think and what they considered important.

As for the latter, while we don't get detailed documentation on the military machine as we follow Lurie's journey through it, we do get many tidbits and researched facts about warfare back then, and mainly how disorganized it was.

The Dual Narrative

More often than not, I am quite pleased to see authors trying their hand at crafting numerous narratives through which to experience their stories, even if it doesn't always yield the expected results; the effort is worth the risk. In the case of this novel, in my opinion it worked out almost perfectly, presenting us with two very distinct plots which contrast each other in a ton of ways.

We switch back and forth at a good enough rate to prevent us from getting too bogged down in either of the two perspectives. Additionally, there's a very interesting shift in the flow of time between the two stories, Nora's taking place essentially over a day or so, and Lurie's developing over several years.

Now, pace-wise, I found this book to be on the slower side of things, with the author taking her time whenever possible to add on to the already complex and beautiful painting she has been making of the Arizona wilds.

While the descriptive prose does get in the way of developing the story at certain times, I personally didn't mind it for two basic reasons: the sheer quality of it, and I knew what I was getting into. I can definitely see though how people who are unprepared for it might be turned off at first by this sort of methodical pacing.

A bit earlier I said the approach of having a dual narrative worked out almost perfectly, and it's for the following reason: I found myself caring about Lurie's story much more than Nora's. Now, this has nothing to do with the quality of the writing or the characters: both stories are equally well-written and have their own things going for them.

Nevertheless, Lurie's side of the book felt like it had more heft and significance to it, and in the end, when the two plot lines finally meet, the result was probably a little less than what the author had hoped for. For two narratives to truly work perfectly, they need to be of equal value to the reader.

With this being said, I'm talking about perfection here, and it's not exactly a standard writers should be held up to... which probably goes to show just how little there is to criticize in this magnificent book.

The Final Verdict

Inland by Téa Obreht is a fantastic second novel from one of the more acclaimed young authors of our time, presenting two very interesting and varied stories set in the beautifully-described wild lands of 1893 Arizona. If you enjoy works of historical fiction set in the Old American West, I highly recommend you give this book a shot.

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Téa Obreht Personal site Téa Obreht is a Serbian-American novelist whose debut novel, The Tiger's Wife, won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction as well as being a 2011 National Book Award finalist. Obreht also had the distinction of being a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and was even named among the twenty best American fiction writers under forty by The New Yorker.