There are many glorious spots to drop a fishing line in the Gunnison River around Crested Butte. Great literature is deeply rooted in place, and Colorado towns have been inspiring authors for decades. Ready to try a fiction-fueled vacay? Here’s how it works: Pick a title from the list below, read it solo or with your book club, then follow our travel notes to immerse yourself in a real-life literary setting.
First there was mining, then came dredging – which brings Sandra Dallas’ complex characters to the fictional town of Middle Swan in the early 1900s in. The book is a bittersweet patchwork of yarns spun by 86-year-old Hennie Comfort, who has her own narrative to close before moving “down below” to bide her days in the Midwest with her daughter.Readers will recognize Middle Swan as the charming town of Breckenridge.
Quilting is a big motif in Dallas’ novel, and there’s a gorgeous spread hanging at Summit County’s South Branch Library, courtesy of the Summit Quilters. Local arts organization Breck Create has a new resident, Kayla Powers, a fiber artist from Detroit. See her modern take on quilting during open studio hours, listed online at breckcreate.org.
Addie Moore thrusts the book into motion when she comes to a neighbor with a pretty strange request. A beautiful love story unfolds beneath Haruf’s idiosyncratic writing, characterized by rich dialogue and lean prose. You won’t find flowery descriptions in Haruf’s work, but the author’s choice words are all you’ll need to get a sense of Colorado’s Eastern Plains, the sweeping, oft-overlooked shortgrass landscape stretched out from the Front Range to Kansas.
Yuma has over 20 acres of greenspace spread across five distinct parks, and a walk down Main Street takes you past some of the area’s oldest buildings. Take the time to revel in a brand of understated realness that influenced one of the state’s truly standout novelists., a New York Times bestselling middle-grade novel about a girl who’s left behind when the fictional town of Millerville is suddenly evacuated for unknown reasons.
With her then-four-year-old son in mind, Crespo began writing a fact-filled children’s book about the life cycle of a forest affected by wildfire. Covering a period of about 30 years, the fictional story is perfectly pitched to young readers with its emphasis on hope and “regrowth after disaster,” says the book’s illustrator, Dow Phumiruk. Both the author and illustrator are locals, and they visited the forest together during production.