During their first few weeks in Nevada, the family encounter a strange raccoon that is always staring at them from their garden, a flight of helicopters immediately overhead, a black widow spider, a warning about bears, a party of prisoners in the desert, a lake that is somehow far too calm and too blue, and, not long into their stay, the kidnap and murder of a young girl living in the house right next door. Nevada Days is a fictionalised account of Atxaga's nine months' stay as writer-in-residence at the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, where his wife, Ángela, is doing research into Basque emigrants. They are accompanied by their two daughters. Atxaga tells us about strange encounters, his colleagues at the university, and the trips the family make to California and across the Sierra Nevada and to Lake Tahoe, but this fascinating narrative is also interspersed with accounts of his dreams and stories from his past. Nevada Days smoothly weaves together past and present, and shows us how deeply marked we are by experience, history and relationships, however fleeting or enduring, reminding us what a very strange thing life can be.