As surely as certain places inspire writers to create, the resulting works inform our perceptions of these locales. The 38 essays here revisit such literary destinations and also the writers who portrayed them, with affectionate, thought-provoking assessments of Mark Twain, Flannery O'Connor, H.P. Lovecraft, Alice Munro, Jamaica Kincaid, Mary Oliver, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Vladimir Nabokov, M.F.K. Fisher, and Arthur Rimbaud. Among the many highlights are Joyce Maynard traveling to Pablo Neruda's Chile, Ethan Todras-Whitehill climbing a mountain dear to Jack Kerouac, and David Carr seeking out Philip Roth's vanishing New Jersey neighborhoods.