I enjoyed this memoir. There were parts that seemed to jump around. It was difficult to read on a phone/iPad.

In the summer of 2016, Navied Mahdavian and his wife, Emelie made the decision to relocate from the San Francisco Bay area, to six acres in a remote area of rural Idaho. Navied had been a teacher but wanted to focus on being a cartoonist, Emelie was and continues to be a documentary filmmaker. This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America is a graphic memoir that details the Mahdavian family's literal building of a home and encounters with the locals.

As a graphic work, Mahdavian really makes the setting come alive. There are lots of drawings showing the smallness of humans in comparison with the geographic setting. There is also a lot of effort to show and describe the non visual elements, the noise of wildlife, the sound of walking in snow or the feeling of natural darkness. Cityscapes look quite different than the rural life. There are also sections of flashbacks, and inclusion of quotes ( Aldo Leopold, Wallace Stevens) to highlight specifically important points or word boxes describing the history of specific words (naive, minority).

Content wise, the work is a summary of three years, sections feel episodic, in that we know much else has happened between the pages or boxes. This is sometimes cleverly portrayed as arguments about whose turn it is to do a task such as watering the garden or a full page spread of chopping wood. Birds and other things in motion can feel particularly alive soaring or flying, falling lines.

Where the work truly excels is in the recording of personal encounters. Mahdavian is Iranian American and often struggles in his feelings of "otherness" as the people around him in the rural setting exhibit much more conservative mindsets or express themselves with bigoted language. And sure much of that is done from ignorance or aping of what they heard or encountered in their lives. One particular scene details Navied visiting with a friend of his neighbor. Over a shared cup of coffee the neighbor and friend discuss what they saw on the news use derogatory language and praise Trump. Yet when they leave, Navied is invited back anytime. Like any members of a community, the Mahdavaians want to contribute, and are eventually able to do so by reactivating the town's movie theater, but struggle to find films that will appeal.

The Mahdavaians learn a great deal, Emelie was already quite knowledgeable about wildlife, but Navied had never hiked, camped, gardened, or even lived in a snowy place. Nature gives them the challenges of growing their own food, maintaining a wood fire, or keeping a vehicle warm enough to function in harsh winter weather.

As it does for many families, the Mahdavians having children leads them to question their lives and where they live. How much does the physical and social environment shape us as people? How do you counter the expectations of tradition?

This Country is both a love letter and a critique of rural life in America, perfectly balancing the humors of life with the struggles to connect with those different from us. There is great importance in knowing the history of the place you live.

This Country was a really beautiful graphic novel about a couple who moves to rural Idaho. I appreciated the rawness of the outdoors, and portraying how rough it can be. I appreciated the author's discussion of feeling like an "other" in Idaho.