The Land of Little Rain is a book of sketches which portray the high desert country of southern California, where the Sierras descend into the Mojave Desert. Mary Austin finds beauty in the harsh landscape: "This is the sense of the desert hills--that there is room enough and time enough. . . The treeless spaces uncramp the soul." Her story begins with the water trails that lead toward the few life giving springs--the way marked for men by ancient Indian pictographs. Life and death play out at these springs...

In this 1912 novel, Mary Hunter Austin draws inspiration from her own life to tell the story of a gifted woman caught between her public ambition and her private desire. Beginning with her post-Civil War Midwestern girlhood, Austin chronicles the tumultuous life -- its romantic and artistic challenges -- of "tragic actress" Olivia Lattimore. With lyrical insight, she explores the many social and economic obstacles talented women like Olivia face in their pursuit of self-fulfillment. In America’s cynical Gilded Age, Austin asks, can a “woman of genius” find both happiness and success? Summary by Amy Dunkleberger