THIS COUNTRY

A cartoonist and his wife start a life in rural Idaho.

Late in 2016, New Yorker cartoonist Mahdavian and his wife moved to a remote area of Idaho, built a tiny house on several acres of land, started a garden, and had a baby. Along the way, they experienced culture shock—e.g., the vegetarian author was pressured to hunt deer. Mahdavian’s debut book is a whimsically drawn, witty, lyrical graphic memoir. Early on, the author explains that he and his wife were being priced out of their home in San Francisco. “We had visited rural Idaho on a whim the summer before and had fallen in love with the landscape and the freedom it seemed to promise,” he writes. In addition to chronicling his life on their patch of wilderness, Mahdavian describes their neighbors—a relative term in this spread-out landscape—with gentleness, humor, and sensitivity even when they treated him with suspicion. “You’re not a Muslim, are you?” a woman in town asked him. He thinks about it: “Had I given some indication that I might be Muslim? Was I subconsciously orienting myself toward Mecca? But it wasn’t anything I had done. It was my face.” Another neighbor was convinced that the Islamic State group had set up training camps throughout the state. “It’s amazing what the media are told not to tell us,” he told Mahdavian. “The radical Muslims live among the not radical ones. Like they did in their own countries.” But Mahdavian isn’t overly concerned with politics. His lovely pages are filled with gooseberries and cottonwood trees, an exploration of the etymology of the word hearth, and a two-headed calf. Mahdavian and his wife ended up staying in Idaho for only three years, but this moving book serves as a lasting commemoration of their time there.

A beautifully drawn memoir full of humor, intelligence, and sensitivity.