What book have you read that’s set in or near your hometown?
The Mark Twain books set in Hannibal MO are very close to where I grew up. Going to the famous Mark Twain Cave was a regular field trip for school kids while reading Tom Sawyer.
There is a very brief mention in James of a town nearby also.
A few books set along the Mississippi River also cover some of my old stomping grounds.
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I just finished reading Ruta Sepetys’ A Fortune of Sand, set in Detroit and Grosse Pointe. Having lived in the Detroit suburbs my entire life, reading about the historical buildings and familiar locations made the experience even more enjoyable and immersive. I absolutely loved the book and gave it 5 stars for the unique story of long-buried true stories from Detroit during the Prohibition era.
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Amazingly, although I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, I haven’t read any books set there! And to be fair, there haven’t been that many well-known books located in the city, either.
The closest I can think of is Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng, which is set in Shaker Heights. We lived on the East Side (which is where Shaker Heights is located), and we used to drive through the area often on the way to the art museum. It’s one of the wealthier neighborhoods of the city, and hardly representative of it.
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I remember going to the Mark Twain attractions in Hannibal when driving through MO years ago. I’m sure you went there many times. My daughter was about 12 at the time. We all enjoyed it.
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I love this question. Everyone has seen A Christmas Story a zillion times. It is based on stories in the book In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash (1966) by Jean Shepherd. Mr. Shepherd also co-scripted and was narrator of the movie. He grew up in Hammond, IN and went to the same high school as I did - he graduated in 1939, my mother in 1942 and me in 1967! We all went to the same Dairy Queen he mentions in the book. You can imagine how I can relate to that movie even though the home in the film is actually located in Cleveland, OH! He calls the town Hohmanville instead of Hammond. The street I lived on ran off of Hohman Ave. The first time I saw the movie, I thought I was being pranked. That’s when I began the research. Anyway, that’s my hometown brush with literature.
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‘Remarkably Bright Creatures’ is set on the Puget Sound in Washington state, very close to where we live in Bellevue (near Microsoft.) Also set in our area: Snow Falling on Cedars (love it), Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (also loved it), and there must be many more that will come to me at some point!
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I really don’t have hometown but we are currently living in IN. While I haven’t read it, I understand Fever in the Heartland mentions our city. Not quite the book/topic I like to associate with our area.
We are currently in the process of moving to Salamanca, Spain. Two books waiting for me on my shelves which touch on the city are The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón and In The Night of Time by Antonio Muñoz Molina.
The Divorce Colony by April White is a wonderful history of the city in which I live, Sioux Falls, SD. During the Gilded Age the wealthy came to my community to divorce, since the waiting period was so short. The economic boon was tremendous, but like all good things laws changed in other states, like Nevada, so Sioux Falls was not so desirable any longer. The book came out in 2022 to national critical acclaim. The author wrote for Atlas Obscura and the Smithsonian Magazine.
Know the Cleveland area well as Hubby grew up on the west side but many of his family resided on the east. We still go up to the lake when we can.
The Bridges of Madison County is further south from my hometown; however, the author was a professor at the university I attended. He left shortly after the huge book sales and eventual movie rights earned him far more than his teaching salary!
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Yes, we visited the Mark Twain attractions many times. It seemed it was almost every school year for a while. I’ve been back in recent years and as so often happens it all seems so much smaller now.
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@Gabi_J that sounds like a very exciting move. I’ve only visited a very small bit of Spain but would love to see more. The Carlos Ruiz Zafon books are among my past favorites. That’s actually a series of three or four books and looked at as a whole they make a really interesting picture.
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What a great story, @Connie_K! Thanks for sharing!
My father’s career required our family to move often. I tell everyone I am from the Northern VA area because DC was our home base and later my parents retired there.
The book that has just recently given me memories of my growing years is The Family of Spies by Christine Kuehn. The plot is located Hawaii’s island of O’ahu. My first three and a half years I enjoyed playing in the waves and sand on Kailua Beach. We later moved back to Pearl Harbor. My junior prom was held in The Royal Hawaiian Hotel also called The Pink Palace. It is on the shores of Waikiki Beach. I also had the pleasure of hearing Don Ho sing his hit song “Tiny Bubbles” at the nightclub in Honolulu’s International Market Place. I know that song dates me!
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@Evonne_Benedict Your area makes for such a great moody setting. I hope you’ve been able to catch the Netflix release of Remarkably Bright Creatures with Sally Field - it’s so good. Snow Falling on Cedars is such a lovely book and film also.
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I need to watch Remarkably Bright Creatures, I’ve heard so many good things and Sally Field seems perfect for the role.
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Swallowtail by Emily Ross
As I recently posted as part of the Book Club Discussion of Won’t Be Long Now, I grew up on a farm near a small town in South Central, Kansas fairly close in Kansas distances to the book’s location of Hutchinson, Kansas. In rural Kansas, 60 miles is considered next door. I now live in a tiny community a few miles from Dodge City. 60 miles to the west is Holcomb, Kansas, site of the Clutter murders which were the basis for In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. Dodge City though, is world famous on its own as the Cowboy Capital of the World, and in the 1870s as the Queen of the Cowtowns, and the Wickedest Little City in the West. I absolutely love Old West history so I feel privileged that I get to live in the midst of it. Dodge City is featured in hundreds of nonfiction books with probably the most well known and recent being Dodge City: Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson and The Wickedest Town in the American West by Tom Clavin. On the fiction side Mary Doria Russell’s Doc is set in Dodge City and is a great read.
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@Lana_Maskus I think you win the prize for living in book setting central. A couple of years ago I read The Children’s Blizzard which was set somewhere in KS but I’m not quite sure where. It was a sad but totally engrossing event. Also Wizard of Oz. I feel I should know where that was set but I can’t recall.
NOTE: it looks like The Children’s Blizzard actually takes place in NE instead.
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