Written in the genre and form that first brought her fame,

(1924), a collection of sketches about the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, can be read as Austin's attempt to examine the cultures of Southwestern peoples and to understand from that study the effect of an idea she'd been working on in her translations of American Indian poetry—the idea of the landscape line (see entry on Austin's

for a fuller description of this idea). Weaving human and natural history together with ethnography, Austin creates a book that is meant, according to its authorial preface, as both prophecy and ritual, lyrically reiterating, and in many cases developing more fully, her familiar themes.

She evokes the difference between Native Americans' communal

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Citation: Hoyer, Mark T.. "Land of Journey's Ending". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 June 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=4124, accessed 21 November 2024.]