The Oregon Experiment

About Keith Scribner

Keith Scribner is the author of two previous novels, Miracle Girl and The GoodLife, a New York Times Notable Book and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. He is a recipient of Stanford University’s Wallace Stegner and John L’Heureux fellowships, and is currently a professor at Oregon State University in Corvallis, where he lives with his wife, the poet Jennifer Richter, and their children.

Praise

“The Oregon Experiment has many virtues—Scribner has a sharp eye for the complicated grace and endless capacity for self-delusion among our species, he makes the potential cultural and economic independence of Cascadia worth pondering rather than snickering at, and the attention to scent and smell add a lovely subtle layer of narrative; ‘his scalp and skin were in the dusty family,’ Naomi thinks of her husband, ‘canvas stored in the basement, pages of a book pulled from a garage-sale box, a stranger’s wool sweater.’” 
--San Francisco Chronicle

“The Oregon Experiment captures the sheer physicality of new parenthood as well as its emotional tyranny in our age of awareness better than anything I’ve read, fiction or nonfiction … In many ways, The Oregon Experiment belongs in the same class of modern social realism as Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections and Freedom. It is a hugely ambitious, decidedly modern, distinctly American novel, with complicated family dynamics, and remarkable depth of character and psychological nuance.”
--The Rumpus

“Excellent literary fiction with an occasionally humorous touch.”
--Library Journal starred review

“…the experiment [is] one of making a new life among Oregon’s latter-day hippies and anarchists, learning to be parents, and discovering the rebellious spirit in themselves and the local population. Scribner’s The GoodLife made quite a splash, and The Oregon Experiment is no less ambitious, with rich characters and some amusing plot twists.”
--Booklist

“Though set in Oregon, the themes and sensuality of The Oregon Experiment are universal, and readers anywhere will relate to the deep characters and lush description of setting and culture. I don’t say this lightly: I’ll be reading this book again within the year”
--Jennifer Tyler, “Three Guys One Book”

“Each character struggles with the line between idealism and realism, and, to his great credit, Scribner (Miracle Girl) avoids making the reader feel lectured as he plays out his exploration of what happens when ideas and desires get put into practice.”
--Publishers Weekly