In The Lake of the Woods
I think Tim O'Brien lives in Texas now, but this author grew up first in Austin and then Worthington, Minnesota, and tends to write stories and books that connect to his homeplace. I listened to him read and talk about writing and life last spring in Chaska, and although everyone was asking him questions about The Things They Carried , he did slip in an admission that he believes his best book is his 1994 novel In The Lake of the Woods . The comment stayed with me. I wondered why. So when I was thinking of the next MN-based novel I could take in , his title came to mind. The Lake of the Woods. It sounds mythic, doesn't it? Something you get lost in. As I read the book, I came to believe that this was exactly what O'Brien intended. The themes include deception and mystery, loneliness and memory, and I was impressed by how well these inner states fit with O'Brien's description of the setting: "The wilderness was massive. It was a place, Wade came to unde...