The Land of Little Rain: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Land of Little Rain, credited to Mary Hunter Austin, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of The Land of Little Rain by Mary Hunter Austin. Read by Sue Anderson The Land of Little Rain is a book of sketches which portray the high desert country of southern California, where the Sierras descend into the Mojave Desert. Mary Austin finds beauty in the harsh landscape: "This is the sense of the desert hills--that there is room enough and time enough. . . The treeless spaces uncramp the soul." Her story begins with the water trails that lead toward the few life giving springs--the way marked for men by ancient Indian pictographs. Life and death play out at these springs. Rabbits fall prey to the coyote; buzzards hang heavily in the sky above. She then writes of individuals who eke out their living in this land of scarce resources--an itinerant gold prospector, a sheepherder, a blind Indian basket maker. Austin's spare prose creates unforgettable vignettes: "Choose a hill country for storms. . . I remember one night of thunderous rain made unendurably mournful by the houseless cry of a cougar whose lair, and perhaps his family, had been buried under a slide of broken boulders . . ." Anyone who sees beauty in the Southwestern deserts, or who just enjoys good nature writing, will savor The Land of Little Rain. ( Summary by Sue Anderson )

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Land of Little Rain
• Author credits: Mary Hunter Austin
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 14
• Listed recording duration: 4:19:02

Catalogue topics

• Natural History--California
• California--Description and Travel
• Sierras
• Mojave Desert

Track guide

1. 01 - The Land of Little Rain — 24:49
2. 02 - Water Trails of the Ceriso — 20:05
3. 03 - The Scavengers — 14:30
4. 04 - The Pocket Hunter — 18:22
5. 05 - Shoshone Land — 19:41
6. 06 - Jimville - A Bret Harte Town — 17:45
7. 07 - My Neighbor's Field — 15:30
8. 08 - The Mesa Trail — 18:15
9. 09 - The Basket Maker — 16:48
10. 10 - The Streets of the Mountains — 19:35
11. 11 - Water Borders — 18:19
12. 12 - Other Water Borders — 18:35
13. 13 - Nurslings of the Sky — 18:53
14. 14 - The Little Town of the Grape Vines — 17:57

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.