The Nature of Things

I read  Téa Obreht's first novel, The Tiger's Wife , in 2011 and found it wonderfully imaginative with beautiful writing. It was set in the homeland of the author's ancestors, the former Yugoslavia, and told the story of a young doctor, a pediatrician, who had been set on the course of her life's work by her beloved grandfather. He told her stories that were based on the folk tales of the area and that incorporated the supernatural and the superstitious. They were a major influence on her life. Now, finally, Obreht has produced a new book that is every bit as beautifully written and imaginative as her first one and it, too, contains elements of folk tales that border on the supernatural, as well as the actual historical events of the area about which she is writing. But she's no longer in Eastern Europe. Her historical fiction now takes us to the American Southwest, mainly Arizona Territory in 1893. And again she has given us some truly unforgettable characters. Lur...