Looking for fresh reads? Western authors weigh in.

Here are some books from 2020 you don’t want to miss this winter.

The coronavirus pandemic may have disrupted much of what boosts new book releases — bookstores, events and author signings, attention spans — but Westerners need good reading material as much as ever. Fortunately, writers have obliged, with new works that offer education, delight and, occasionally, escape. Here, some of our favorite authors suggest books to dive into this winter. By spring, we hope this reading will help you feel both more grounded in the present, and ready to build a better future.

Subduction, Kristen Millares Young — fiction, Red Hen Press

One of the books I read this year and loved (and keep recommending!) is Kristen Millares Young’s Subduction, set on the Makah Reservation in Neah Bay, Washington. The story follows two characters: Claudia, an anthropologist who has spent the last few years conducting fieldwork among the Makah, and Peter, the son of one of her cultural correspondents. There is a lot of interesting tension surrounding major themes of family, community and belonging — Peter has lived off the reservation for years and works as an underwater welder, and Claudia is herself Latina and an immigrant — but the book is also full of beautiful and lyrical prose grounded in the land and seascape of the Northwest coast. So if you’re nerdy about place-based writing and like to give the field of anthropology the side-eye, this is a book for you.

– Danielle Geller is a writer of personal essays and memoir (Dog Flowers, forthcoming 2021), and she currently lives and works on the traditional territory of the Lekwungen People.

Votes For Women: The Battle for the 19th Amendment, Ally Shwed, editor — graphic nonfiction, Little Red Bird Press

As you can imagine, this has been a crazy time. The only new book I’ve read recently is Votes For Women, an anthology graphic novel edited by comics creator Ally Shwed. All of the contributing comics creators are female. I love the book’s exploration of the history of women’s suffrage from a variety of different perspectives — Black woman, Latinx and Native women, LGBTQ, etc. I actually liked it so much that I bought it for my mother for her birthday last month.

– Graphic novel author R. Alan Brooks teaches writing for Regis University’s MFA program, and Lighthouse Writers Workshop, as well as writing a weekly comic for The Colorado Sun, “What’d I Miss?”

Cactus League, Emily Nemens — fiction, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

I loved reading Cactus League by Emily Nemens earlier this year. There was something about reading this book that just felt warm and comfortable to me, even though a lot of the characters are struggling or even self-destructing. Maybe it was the pacing and the prose, or the depth of attention to how individual people think and feel. It felt like being with a friend.

– Jon Mooallem is the author of This is Chance! and a writer at large for The New York Times Magazine.

See seven more authors’ recent favorites and 20 more recommendations here: https://www.hcn.org/issues/52.12/ideas-books-looking-for-fresh-reads-western-authors-weigh-in

Elena Saavedra Buckley is a contributing editor at High Country News.