The Living is American author Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard is an American author, best known for her narrative prose in both fiction and non-fiction. She has published works of poetry, essays, prose, and literary criticism, as well as two novels and one memoir. Her 1974 work Pilgrim at Tinker Creek won the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for General...

's first novel, a historical fiction

Historical fiction

Historical fiction tells a story that is set in the past. That setting is usually real and drawn from history, and often contains actual historical persons, but the principal characters tend to be fictional...

 account of European settlers and a group of Lummi

Lummi

The Lummi , governed by the Lummi Nation, are a Native American tribe of the Coast Salish ethnolinguistic group in western Washington state in the United States...

 natives in late 19th century Washington published in 1992. The main action of the book takes place in the Puget Sound

Puget Sound

Puget Sound is a sound in the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected marine waterways and basins, with one major and one minor connection to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Pacific Ocean — Admiralty Inlet being the major connection and...

 settlements of Whatcom, Old Bellingham, Sehome

Sehome

Sehome is a neighborhood in Bellingham, Washington. The neighborhood, named after Sehome Hill, was originally a town owned by the Bellingham Bay & British Columbia Railroad Company . The name comes from Nooksack S-yah-whom, the name of an early Indian in the area....

, and Fairhaven

Fairhaven, Washington

Fairhaven, Washington was founded in the late 1880s and is now part of the City of Bellingham, Washington, USA. It is on the south side of Bellingham, and borders Bellingham Bay on the west and Western Washington University on the northeast...

, which would later merge to form the city of Bellingham, Washington

Bellingham, Washington

Bellingham is the largest city in, and the county seat of, Whatcom County in the U.S. state of Washington. It is the twelfth-largest city in the state. Situated on Bellingham Bay, Bellingham is protected by Lummi Island, Portage Island, and the Lummi Peninsula, and opens onto the Strait of Georgia...

.

As research for the novel, Dillard lived for five years in the Bellingham area, much of that time in 19th century era accommodations.