Girl in Landscape: A Novel [Paperback]

One the irrepressibly inventive Jonathan Lethem could weld science fiction and the Western into a mesmerizing novel of exploration and otherness, sexual awakening and loss. At the age of 13 Pella Marsh loses her mother and her home on the scorched husk that is planet Earth. Her sorrowing family emigrates to the Planet of the Archbuilders, whose mysterious inhabitants have names like Lonely Dumptruck and Hiding Kneel—and a civilization that and frightens their human visitors.

On this new world, spikily independent Pella becomes as uneasy envoy between two species. And at the same time is unwilling drawn to a violent loner who embodies all the paranoid machismo of the frontier ethic. Combining the tragic grandeur of John Ford'sThe Searchersand the sexual tension ofLolita and transporting them to a planet light years,Girl in Landscape is a tour de force. 

"One of the most original voices among younger American novelists....Jonathan Lethem's imagination [is]...marvelously fertile." --Newsday

"Lethem is opening up blue sky for American fiction."--Village Voice

"Complex, scary and finally moving."--Atlanta Journal & ConstitutionJonathan Lethem was born in New York and attended Bennington College. He is the author of the novelsGun, with Occasional Music; Amnesia Moon;andAs She Climbed Across the Table; as well as a collection of short stories,The Wall of the Sky the Wall of the Eye. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.US