I kind of assume that most people who know of James A. Michener are folks who recall seeing the quite thick Hawaii book in a library. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it in an actual book store. And then there’s the subset of people who buckled down and read the monster, realizing that it is essentially a historical epic. Multi-generational story lines connected by a geographic place.

Now, if you’re anything like me in this aspect, you noticed that not only was the style pretty unique, but he wrote over 40 books, many of them just as chunky as Hawaii. For me, the audiobooks are always a solid choice. Something that is written in a way where I can listen while doing other stuff, while still following the extremely long threads between times. Caravans has been sitting in my library for years now, but I had never listened to it. It’s about Afghanistan in 1946 ish. It’s a single main character, doing a specific thing. Very different than what I’ve come to expect, but his writing is still top notch. Not his usual fare, but an absolutely delightful read, with characters and societies that are most assuredly not two dimensional and simple. As a matter of fact, I think the only simple character in this book was Aunt Becky, an ornery camel who still has a relatively complex relationship with the handler, and the life of a beast of burden, all while being…“incredibly stupid”. It was a fun read, and when one remembers that Michener is known for extensive research and this book was written in the 1950s, some of the offhand comments by some of the characters were scarily prescient. Highly recommended.