Best Books Set in Arizona

Every state is known for something. As you work your way through the list, don't miss the best books set in Arizona. While you're at it, check out the best movies set in Arizona, too.

Arizona, a southwestern U.S. state, is best known for the Grand Canyon, the mile-deep chasm carved by the Colorado River. Flagstaff, a ponderosa pine–covered mountain town, is a major gateway to the Grand Canyon.

Other natural sites include Saguaro National Park, protecting the cactus-filled Sonoran Desert landscape. Tucson is the University of Arizona territory and is home to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.

In this post:

Laughing Boy: A Navajo Love Story

Amazon Kindle Edition
La Farge, Oliver (Author)

Laughing Boy: A Navajo Love Story

Author: Oliver La Farge

Laughing Boy is a model member of his tribe. Raised in old traditions, skilled in silver work, and known for his prowess in the wild horse races, he does the Navajos of T’o Tlakai proud. But times are changing. It is 1914, and the first car has just driven into their country.

Then, Laughing Boy meets Slim Girl—and despite her “American” education and his family's warnings, he gives in to desire and marries her.

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The Bean Trees: A Novel

Kingsolver, Barbara (Author)
English (Publication Language)

The Bean Trees (Greer Family #1)

Author: Barbara Kingsolver

A bestseller that has come to be regarded as an American classic, The Bean Trees is the novel that launched Barbara Kingsolver’s remarkable literary career.

It is the charming, engrossing tale of rural Kentucky native Taylor Greer, who only wants to get away from her roots and avoid getting pregnant.

She succeeds, but inherits a three-year-old Native American girl named Turtle along the way, and together, from Oklahoma to Arizona, half-Cherokee Taylor and her charge search for a new life in the West.

Hers is a story about love and friendship, abandonment and belonging, and the discovery of surprising resources in seemingly empty places.

Almanac of the Dead

Silko, Leslie Marmon (Author)
English (Publication Language)

Almanac of the Dead

Author: Leslie Marmon Silko

In its extraordinary range of characters and culture, Almanac of the Dead is fiction on a grand scale. The acclaimed author of Ceremony has undertaken a weaving of ideas and lives, fate and history, passion and conquest in an attempt to re-create the moral history of the Americas, told from the point of view of the conquered, not the conquerors.

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The Monkey Wrench Gang

Abbey, Edward (Author)
English (Publication Language)

The Monkey Wrench Gang

Author: Edward Abbey

Ex-Green Beret George Hayduke has returned from war to find his beloved southwestern desert threatened by industrial development.

Joining with Bronx exile and feminist saboteur Bonnie Abzug, wilderness guide and outcast Mormon Seldom Seen Smith, and libertarian billboard torcher Doc Sarvis, M.D., Hayduke is ready to fight the power – taking on the strip miners, clear-cutters, and the highway, dam, and bridge builders who are threatening the natural habitat.

The Monkey Wrench Gang is on the move – and peaceful coexistence is damned!

In the Heart of the Canyon (Vintage Contemporaries)

Hyde, Elisabeth (Author)
English (Publication Language)

In the Heart of the Canyon

Author: Elisabeth Hyde

Over thirteen long days, twelve assorted passengers, three rafting guides, and one stray dog will navigate the rapids of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon together. From their early-morning rise on the shore of the river to the adrenaline rush of paddling through Lava Falls, they will soon come to know each other more intimately than they could have expected.