There is nothing more transporting than a great novel read in a rose-scented bubble bath. (Taking a hardcover into the tub is the ultimate luxury.) Then again…there’s reading a beautiful novel in a hammock. And a novel pairs well with a beach towel, a Topo Chico bubble water, and a long afternoon at Austin’s coldest swimming hole, Barton Springs. Here are five books that transport me, even when I can’t make it far from home.
What You Don’t Know about Charlie Outlaw by Leah Stewart
From her first novel, Body of A Girl, I’ve been a big fan of Leah Stewart. She’s fantastic at keeping me riveted with complex plots, but what I really adore are her characters. Charlie Outlaw and Josie Lamar are both actors, both deeply flawed and seeking true love.
When Charlie heads to a remote island to get over his breakup with Josie, things go very wrong…leading to adventures neither Josie or Charlie expected. I’m a sucker for love stories, and this is a wild one.
Perma Red by Debra Earling
One of my all-time favorite books, Perma Red tells the story of the unforgettable Louise White Elk, who desperately wants to escape her home, Montana’s Flathead Indian Reservation. (The book begins, “When Louise White Elk was nine, Baptiste Yellow Knife blew a fine power into her face and told her she would disappear.”)
Set in the 1940’s, Perma Red shows that many of our deepest desires—for love, belonging, and a place to stay—are timeless.
Re Jane by Patricia Park
I adored this modern re-telling of Jane Eyre (one of my other favorite books…and where I got my middle name). Re Jane is the story of a half-Korean, half-American orphan from Flushing, Queens, who leaves her job at her uncle’s grocery store to become an au pair for two Brooklyn English professors who have adopted a “bright (one might even say precocious) nine-year-old daughter” from China.
Jane travels to Seoul, Korea, and wrestles with identity and breaking free of obligations to discover her true self. She’s a bright and winning narrator; I’d follow her anywhere.
White Fur by Jardine Libaire
Libaire is a poet, and this is clear from the first sentences of White Fur: “Outside their motel window, Wyoming is lurid with sunset. A billboard for Winstons simmers on the horizon of highway, as if the cigarettes might ignite in their box.” White Fur is the fierce, tender, ravishing story of Elise and Jamey, two people from different worlds
(Jamey is a wealthy Yale undergraduate and Elise, a girl who’s arrived in New Haven via Greyhound bus, wearing a white fur coat) set in gritty, glorious, 1980’s New York City. (There’s even a wild party in Trump Tower.) The book is both beautifully written and moving, the type of novel I’m always hoping to find.
A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabelle Allende
Allende’s luminous new novel was inspired by a true-life story: during the Spanish Civil War, the poet Pablo Neruda chartered a rescue ship, the S.S. Winnipeg, to rescue 2200 Spanish refugees. Allende imagines two refugees on this ship, Roser and Victor, as they attempt to create new lives in Chile.
This is my favorite of Allende’s seventeen novels, and that’s saying a lot. Allende, herself a refugee, brings nuance and beauty to the lives of her fictional, displaced characters. In watching the love story of Roser and Victor bloom, I was reminded that connection—not being in control, not even understanding how your story will unfold–is at the heart of joy.
