Somehow, we don't expect many people to be reading Seattlest this afternoon (and honestly, if you are right now, please stop and run outside while you can). We'll use the gorgeous weather as a touchpoint for our brief initial comments on Timothy Egan's The Worst Hard Time: Thank god we don't live in the Midwest. That aside, so far we're enthralled with Egan's ability to craft historical figures into living, breathing characters with better depth than we find in a great deal of fiction. He's working a small bit of Lost magic on us, introducing a range of characters all drawn into small-town Dalhart--a once unpopulated stretch of the Texas-Oklahoma panhandle that experienced a sudden boom thanks to deceit and false promises from greedy land developers and a federal government desperate to settle what had been known forever as "No Man's Land." more ›