7 summer read about Colorado

There’s something about Colorado’s breathtaking landscapes and pioneering spirit that seems to attract great writers.

Just last month, Colorado selected two outstanding new books to represent its local literary heritage at this year’s National Book Festival. But look further and you’ll find that this state has a treasure trove of literary classics waiting to be rediscovered.

RED invited Jason Miller, Ph.D., professor of English at Metropolitan State University in Denver, to name some great reads of all time.

“The Shining” by Stephen King

No discussion of Colorado’s literary history should fail to mention former Boulder resident Stephen King, who has featured the state in several novels. “Misery,” for example, used harsh Rocky Mountain winters as a primary plot device, while “The Stand” featured a harrowing journey through the Eisenhower Tunnel. But “The Shining” is perhaps the writer’s loudest shout-out to his former home, and it might be the most widely read novel set in the state.

The book’s eerie Overlook Hotel is based on the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, which inspired King after a one-night stay to write a haunting story set in a deserted location. And while most people are familiar with Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation (who could forget Jack Nicholson and his axe?), it’s worth noting that the book is very different and well worth reading.

“Centenary” by James Michener

Written by James Michener, a former Greeley resident, “Centennial” is a sprawling, multigenerational novel that expertly captures the spirit of the South Platte’s early settlers. In hundreds of beautifully written pages, it presents a compelling vision of Colorado from prehistory to the early 1970s.

The book not only tells the story of how the land and the people who came to inhabit it shaped each other; it also outlines the larger Western project that has been so significant to American identity. One could argue that the popularity of the novel and subsequent adapted miniseries, much of which was filmed in Colorado, helped solidify our state’s importance in the nation’s history.

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“The angle of rest” by Wallace Stegner

This is a fascinating novel with a fascinating origin story. In 1876, adventurous young New York heiress Mary Hallock Foote married a fortune-hunting mining engineer and headed west, only to face a life of hardship in inhospitable towns, including Leadville, with silver boom.

A century later, novelist Wallace Stegner received permission from Foote’s family to use his life story (and letters home) as the foundation for this historical saga, which many consider his magnum opus. While the novel features an engaging fictional narrative, Foote’s letters—many published verbatim—form the story’s emotional backbone and provide an illuminating insight into what it meant to be a woman and an artist in the prosperous West. Her collected letters were later published under the title A Victorian Lady in the Far West.

“The Song of the Alark.”” by Willa Cather

Willa Cather’s third novel, in many ways a self-portrait, is an exploration of the artistic instinct given by a hard-hewn landscape: the Colorado plains of the 1890s. Initially set in the fictional mountain town of Moonstone, the book follows the fortunes of a talented singer, Thea Kronborg, who is gradually outgrowing his roots in the American western plains and beginning to realize his artistic potential.

But as Thea’s talents move her further east to greater and greater acclaim, what gradually becomes clear to her is a lesson that many who grew up in Colorado have learned : the state you leave may never leave you. This powerful story was the second novel in Cather’s acclaimed Great Plains Trilogy.

“Sometimes a great idea” by Ken Kesey

After the stunning success of his debut novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Kesey’s sophomore effort was this captivating and expansive book-stopper. Set primarily in a fictional Oregon town in the 1960s, it features the Stamper clan wreaking havoc, dealing a bitter blow to the entire town as they fight and betray each other.

But the novel also lingers for a while in Rocky Ford, where the post-World War II population is shown gradually preparing for rapid social change. What’s more, the town’s famous Watermelon Day tradition, established in 1878 when a local farmer shared his crop with passengers on a passing train, is put in the spotlight. In Kesey’s hands, the occasion acts as a cultural crossroads where traditional and emerging values ​​collide in this seminal American story.

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“On the road” by Jack Kerouac

Kerouac’s highly autobiographical novel, a defining work of the Beat movement, follows main characters Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty (based on Kerouac and his literary soul mate, Neal Cassady) as they tirelessly travel up, down and across the country.

Unsurprisingly, their criss-crossing road trips take them through Colorado multiple times, and some notable developments occur in the state. During the book’s second visit to Denver, for example, we see the beginning of a rift between the protagonists—a rift that will define the rest of the novel.

The book also reveals Kerouac’s adoration for Denver as a city where perspectives meet and mingle to shape something new. This sentiment is perhaps best captured when Paradise describes walking “with the world’s worst grin of glee, among the tramps and cowboys of Larimer Street.”

“Smart women” by Judy Blume

While many of us grew up with Judy Blume’s children’s books, her novels for adults aren’t nearly as well known, but they deserve to be. “Smart Women” tells the heartwarming story of two recently divorced mothers in their 30s who navigate the messy challenges of dating while managing difficult relationships with their daughters.

The Colorado connection comes from the setting of the book. Published in 1980, Smart Women is set in Boulder, a location that put the book at the forefront of pop culture’s fascination with the college town that continues today. All in all, this feels like a Centennial State novel, given that exploring new beginnings is a common Colorado theme. If Blume’s two main characters want a fresh start in a land of opportunity, they’ve found the right place.