Dear Match Book,

I’m spending the summer doing a big road trip around the United States, and I’d like to read my way across the country as I go. I’m looking for books that speak to the heart of a place. I’ll be traveling west to east and then back again. My route includes stops in Portland, Ore.; Glacier, Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Arches and Canyonlands National Parks; Denver and Breckenridge, Colo.; Kentucky, Washington, D.C.; and New York City. Some of my favorite books are “East of Eden,” by John Steinbeck, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” by Betty Smith, and anything by Wendell Berry or Mary Oliver. I’ve also enjoyed memoirs by Molly Caro May and J. D. Vance. Since I can’t fit a whole library in my van with me, which books should I bring?

CLAIRE CORNELL

OAKLAND, CALIF.

Dear Claire,

I’ve never gotten the hang of literary tourism. I lingered over the pages of Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” on South Beach and “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler,” by Italo Calvino, outside Tulum. Environmental dissonance seems to fix books in my consciousness. However, your ambitious tour is both geographically and bookishly inspiring. With so many miles to cover (I hope you’ll consider packing audiobooks!) over such diverse terrain, I can see the joy and wisdom in letting literature act as your travel guide.

Put a Bird on It

As you kick off your trip in the Pacific Northwest, try a novel intended for younger readers with enough style and complexity to keep the attention of adults. “Wildwood,” the first book in a trilogy by Colin Meloy (with folksy, sylvan illustrations by Carson Ellis), follows the adventures of Prue, a 12-year-old vegetarian and vinyl enthusiast from Portland, as she sets out to rescue her baby brother, Mac, after he is kidnapped by a murder of crows and spirited away to a fantastical forest teeming with savage and noble creatures at the western edge of the city.

Human Natures

Two lyrical books, each rooted in history, weave together memoir and environmental consciousness hewing to both your route and your interests. “Wild places can unwind a mind,” remarks an Iraq War veteran to Terry Tempest Williams early in her collection of essays about American national parks, “The Hour of Land.” Williams’s book winds its way through 12 nature reserves, including three of those on your tour: Grand Teton, Canyonlands and Glacier. Her sweeping views of the country’s protected lands (complemented by photographs by Lee Friedlander and Ansel Adams, among others) open up new ways of thinking about America’s contemporary divisions.