Searoad: Chronicles of Klatsand

Ursula K. Le Guin’s most poetic novel unfolds in 13 interconnected stories about women and the lives of artists in a small coastal town in Oregon

One of Ursula K. Le Guin’s most realistic novels, Searoad: Chronicles of Klatsand, which was first published in 1991, is also among her most inventive. Cast as a series of interconnected stories set in a small vacation town on the Oregon coast, it offers vivid and powerfully evocative portraits of the town’s residents and the community they have built. Some have deep roots in the village, while others have come for just a weekend: but all are pilgrims subject to inexpressible longings.

Le Guin’s response to Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, this unforgettable novel plumbs some of the deepest and most abiding themes in Le Guin’s work, especially the relationships between mothers and daughters, the nature of women’s work, and the lives of artists.

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) was the recipient of multiple Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards. In 2014, she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.