Then again, you can just check our list below for fifteen must-read books about Colorado (thanks to Alan Prendergast, Tom Noel, Habitat Library, Teague Bohlen and a host of others for their ideas...and blurbs):
Fifteen Books You Should Read Now About Colorado
Angle of ReposeWallace Stegner
While Leadville is only one of several locations that this sprawling Pulitzer-winning novel covers, the trip across the history of the West is more than worth the time. The novel follows wheelchair-bound historian and academic Lyman Ward, who has lost connection with his son and living family and decides to write about his frontier-era grandparents. Such remains the reputation of Stegner's novel, which the Modern Library ranked at 82 on its 1998 list of the 100 best English-language novels of the twentieth century.
Butcher's Crossing
John Williams
For decades, John Williams taught at the University of Denver. And while he was influencing young minds, he was working on a more "realistic" kind of Western novel. "The subject of the West has undergone a process of mindless stereotyping," he said after this 1960 novel, Butcher's Crossing, was released, following Harvard student protagonist Will Andrews on a buffalo hunt and into the violent world of Butcher's Crossing, Kansas, in the 1870s.
Centennial
James Michener
Does James Michener play a little fast and loose with the facts in this doorstop-sized classic? Sure — it's historical fiction, not a textbook, which he created to mark the state's centennial. But the sprawling epic portrays some of Colorado’s most dramatic history (the Sand Creek Massacre, for example) while telling the story of the fictional titular city in Weld County from the late 1700s all the way through the 1970s. And if the sheer length of the novel seems a little daunting, a gorgeously over-dramatic and star-studded mini-series of it was made in 1978. Both the book and the mini-series are worth experiencing, for very different reasons.
The Dog Stars
Peter Heller
Peter Heller has written a handful of novels, most of which have some Colorado connection — but none so direct as The Dog Stars, his debut, a post-apocalyptic story set in our state following a (yikes) worldwide viral disaster. It’s an enthralling and suspense-filled yarn that Playboy praised as “one of the most powerful reads in years.”
Eclipse
Dalton Trumbo
Later-to-be-blacklisted Dalton Trumbo wrote Eclipse in 1935 about the Colorado town of Shale City, based on Grand Junction, where he was raised. The thinly veiled satire of life there wasn’t all that well received locally at the time, but the years have been kind to Trumbo, re-creating him into a favorite son of sorts. This book is a great place to start understanding why — and to get a good sense of one of the twentieth century’s most interesting writers.
A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains
Isabella Bird
One of the seminal travel memoirs about Colorado — and the first authored by a woman — is A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains, detailing British explorer Isabella Bird's 1873 trip to the Rocky Mountains. It's delivered in epistolary form, a compilation of letters that Bird wrote to her sister about her travels through Estes Park and elsewhere in and around what was then the Colorado Territory. The instant success of the book led to Bird becoming the first woman to be a member of the Royal Geographical Society in 1892.
The Meadow
James Galvin
Booksellers often are confused whether The Meadow should be shelved in nature or fiction. It's a wonderful look at people, nature and land on the Colorado/Wyoming border, which it focuses on a particular meadow on a particular ranch.
On the Road
Jack Kerouac
If you haven’t read Jack Kerouac’s seminal work since you were a kid, you owe it to yourself to give it another shot. Like the Beat Generation that it helped define, the book is barely restrained chaos, but at the same time, it's poetic and affecting and memorable. (So much so that we keep writing about it.) The book may not take place altogether in Colorado, but its roots are here, courtesy of Neal Cassady, Five Points, My Brother’s Bar and the wandering spirit common at a mile high.
Plainsong
Kent Haruf
Kent Haruf's Eastern Plains town of Holt, Colorado, may be solely fictional, but it manages to capture the spirit of an entire landscape not in (or in the shadows of) the mountains for which the state is usually known. Told from multiple perspectives, the book reveals much about the small-town life and population of the prairie lands that begin to the east of Denver and just keep going throughout the Midwest. Haruf went on to write several more books, but this remains our favorite.
The Song of the Lark
Willa Cather
Willa Cather's third novel is set in the fictional mountain town of Moonstone, Colorado, and tells the story of a talented vocal artist who comes of age against the backdrop of the burgeoning American West. The main character eventually leaves Colorado for Chicago, where she finds success; it's a quintessential "great American novel" with very deep Colorado roots.
The Stand
Stephen King
You could argue until (ahem) the end of the world about which Colorado-connected book by Uncle Stevie is best: The Shining would be the clear choice of Estes Park and the Stanley Hotel, and number-one fans of Misery will undoubtedly protest. But The Stand is Stephen King’s magnum opus — or one of them, at least — and much of it is set right here in Colorado…even if it’s still a little nerve-racking to talk about the Project Blue pandemic in the wake of COVID.
Tallgrass
Sandra Dallas
Sandra Dallas’s career is long and storied, and for good reason. From her nonfiction to her 1991 debut novel, Buster Midnight’s Cafe, to 2025's Tough Love, Dallas has delighted readers who love historical situations and vibrant characterization. Her 2007 novel, Tallgrass, set at Amache, the Japanese internment camp outside Granada, Colorado, is both fascinating and of supreme importance, especially in today’s world, where the “othering” of our fellow human beings is tragically once again front and center.
The Thunder Tree: Lessons from an Urban Wildland
Robert Michael Pyle
This is one of the best books on "nature and the city" that you'll find, but it's also an incredible chronicle of the changes in Denver and, especially, over the course of the 1950s. You'll be able to read an excerpt in the updated The Colorado Book.
Sabrina & Corina
Kali Fajardo-Anstine
A 2019 finalist for the National Book Award, Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s collection of short fiction tells the stories of women in Denver, Latina culture, family and culture and place. Fajardo-Anstine is a local whose family has deep roots in the Mile High City — and this book is proof of that connection, that understanding, that fierce love. She followed it with Woman of Light, another stunner that takes you deeper into Colorado's Chicano history.
The Worst Hard Time
Timothy Egan
Think Colorado's economy is tough now? In his immaculately researched 2006 book, Timothy Egan takes you back to the Dust Bowl, when much of Colorado actually blew away, and blizzards of black dust made the horrors of the Depression that much worse. Although Colorado wasn't the only state hit by this catastrophe — the book details how unscientific farming practices put agriculture on a collision course with nature — The Worst Hard Time is more terrifying than any Stephen King novel.
Happy birthday, Colorado! That's a book for every decade so far, and to stick to fifteen, we had to skip Ted Conover, John Fante, Gene Fowler, Pam Houston, Alan Prendergast (forgive us for the conflict, but his Gangbusters is a must-read if you want to understand Denver a century ago, which was nothing to celebrate) and so many authors worthy of your time and attention.
What did we miss? Post a comment or email [email protected].
