Mountain City (2008)

Situated amid the arid peaks of northeastern Nevada, Mountain City was once a booming copper-mining town; today it consists of a few rickety buildings and just 33 residents. ''But when I'm here that makes thirty-four,'' writes 29-year-old Gregory Martin in this evocative memoir about growing up in a ghost town, where the social scene revolved around his family's general store. Martin interweaves portraits of his laconic Cornish grandfather and his Basque uncle with those of the wizened mining widows, making Mountain City a crisp elegy to an almost-vanished American West. A-