The Living is American author Annie Dillard's debut novel, a historical fiction account of European settlers and a group of Lummi natives in late 19th century Washington.

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

"[2] According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, "reviewers found in its depictions of the logging culture of the turn-of-the-20th-century Pacific Northwest the same visionary realism that distinguished the author’s nonfiction.

"[4] The New York Times's Thomas Keneally noted that Dillard has a "tremendous gift for writing in a genuinely epic mode.

"[5] Mary Cantwell, also writing for The New York Times, wrote that "the language of The Living is indeed free of whorls and ridges.

"[2] Clif Mason, writing for Western American Literature, started his review by stating, "The Living is, without doubt, one of the two or three books with which Annie Dillard’s name will automatically be associated long into the future; it is, both stylistically and intellectually, the culmination of everything that she has done before.