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The Painted Forest

WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, available now

In this often-surprising book of essays, Krista Eastman explores the myths we make about who we are and where we’re from. The Painted Forest uncovers strange and little-known “home places”—not only the picturesque hills and valleys of the author’s childhood in rural Wisconsin, but also tourist towns, the “under-imagined and overly caricatured” Midwest, and a far-flung station in Antarctica where the filmmaker Werner Herzog makes an unexpected appearance.

The Painted Forest upends easy narratives of place, embracing tentativeness and erasing boundaries. But it is Eastman’s willingness to play—to follow her curiosity down every odd path, to exude a skeptical wonder—that gives this book depth and distinction. An unlikely array of people, places, and texts meet for close conversation, and tension is diffused with art, imagination, and a strong sense of there being some other way forward. Eastman offers a smart and contemporary take on how we wander and how we belong.


Named one of the best literary nonfiction debuts of 2019 by Poets & Writers.

NAMED A FAVORITE BOOK OF 2019 by THE PROGRESSIVE

WINNER OF THE NORMAN BLEI/AUGUST DERLETH NONFICTION BOOK AWARD

From Publishers Weekly: “Eastman’s deep fascination with and love of her home state, in all its complexity and eccentricity, permeate this moving book and will live on in the reader’s mind.” Read the full review here.

From Zyzzyva: “The Painted Forest proves Eastman to be thoroughly acquainted with the world in which she lives; insatiably curious, she renders people and places in exquisite, elaborate detail.” Read the full review here.

From The Progressive: “(…) reading fellow Wisconsinite Krista Eastman’s debut book of essays that question the very idea of belonging to a place […) has been such sweet, radical relief.” Read more here.

From Shepherd Express: “Eastman’s musings offer keen observations that infuse each essay in this boundary-breaking anthology with a playful voice and artful imagination.” Read the review here.

Read an interview with the author here.

Or listen to this interview from Wisconsin Public Radio.

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The Painted Forest is a singular and visionary portrait of the Midwest, one that defies familiar caricatures of the region. Eastman puts rural towns and hamlets too often dismissed as ‘nowhere’ definitively on the map, and reveals that they are far more uncanny, complex, and bizarre than our wildest imaginings.

MEGHAN O’GIEBLYN

author of Interior States

In this shimmering collection, Krista Eastman blends imagined scene with researched fact to bring us fresh visions of places we thought we knew. From examinations of home to ‘laughter from nowhere,’ from the Wisconsin Dells to Antarctica’s McMurdo Station, from an itinerant painter’s elliptical masterwork to gestation’s feral undertow, Eastman casts a spell that renders us ‘still captive to the mystery in distance, still loyal to the pledge found in story.’

Joni Tevis

author of The World Is On Fire: Scrap, Treasure, and Songs of the Apolcalypse

The Painted Forest is a surprising and tender book in which a reader might be reminded of the considered natural observations of Annie Dillard, the unrelenting gaze of Lia Purpura, or the masterful storytelling of Jo Ann Beard. Eastman is interested in interrogating the history and ethos of several specific places, including her own home state of Wisconsin, as well as elegantly demonstrating the ways in which landscapes shift and morph through generations and recall.

CARYL PAGEL

author of Twice Told