Reannon Muth at the LARB:
I WAS ON my way back home to Las Vegas several years ago when I made a pit stop in Nipton, California, a 25-person town on the edge of the Mojave Desert. My two-year-old daughter and I roamed the length of the town, wandering past a cluster of desert willows and a shuttered motel before stopping to say hello to an elderly woman who stood on the porch of a wooden house.
As a train rumbled by on the railroad behind us, the woman explained that the house was actually a shop and welcomed us in. We picked through shoulder-padded sequined tops and dusty plastic baby dolls in what looked to have once been a living room. I wanted to ask what had brought her to this town, but I didn’t know how to broach the topic. Instead I murmured my thanks and left.
In John M. Glionna’s reported collection Rebels and Outliers: Real Stories of the American West (2025), small towns like Nipton come to life. He profiles seemingly unremarkable people—postal workers, motel owners, museum security guards—but manages to tease out riveting details of their lives.
more here.
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