The Lowest Basin
Subtitle
Arizona Stories
Set across Arizona’s high and low deserts, these stories explore the fragile and fading mythos of the American West. A police officer in Quartzsite faces off in a pistol duel with an old high school bully. An elderly widower helps his neighbor drag a dead horse to the Prescott countryside. An undocumented family flees their Valley home in the aftermath of SB 1070. Through moments of tension and tenderness, these stories peel back the stoic façade of the West to reveal the vulnerabilities beneath, showing how the harsh Arizona landscape shapes its people and their choices. There’s also some Waylon Jennings.
Bio
Jonathan Danielson is an Arizona State University alum, having earned a PhD in English in 2023.
Praise for this book
These are tales of a New West, quieter than the action in old Westerns but louder in the depths of the heart. These stories concern themselves best with the everyday, which is always complex and not easy to navigate, much less survive. So much of the language in these stories works to define the West, though there is no dictionary here. Instead, these are lives lived. These stories fill a need in the literature of the West, and that need is here filled elegantly.
Alberto Ríos Poet Laureate of Arizona and author of "A Good Map of All Things"
'The Lowest Basin' isn’t just a sprawling portrait of life in contemporary Arizona, it’s a wide-ranging and empathetic depiction of the trials we face every day. Like suburban pool decks and the concrete of the 101 and desert rocks that gather heat under the midday sun, these stories, dense and surprising, hold their warmth long after sundown and the book’s final pages. In his debut collection, Danielson has created a vivid cast, and made a memorable stretch of desert that much more indelible.
Emily Nemens Author of "The Cactus League"
