"The Detroit News" called it "a spare volume...that has the power and force of a detonating bomb." According to a biography of Dillard written by her husband Robert D. Richardson and posted on her official website, Dillard "repudiates "The Writing Life", except for the last chapter, the true story of stunt pilot Dave Rahm." Dillard's first novel, "The Living" (1992), centers around the first European settlers of the Pacific Northwest coast. While writing the book, she never allowed herself to read works that postdated the year she was writing about, nor did she use anachronistic words. "Mornings Like This" (1995) is a book dedicated to found poetry. Dillard took and arranged phrases from various old books, creating poems that are often ironic in tone. The poems are not related to the original books' themes. "A good trick should look hard and be easy," said Dillard. "These poems were a bad trick. They look easy and are really hard." "For the Time Being" (1999) is a work of narrative nonfiction. Its topics mirror the various chapters of the book and include "birth, sand, China, clouds, numbers, Israel, encounters, thinker, evil, and now." In her own words on this book, she writes, "I quit the Catholic Church and Christianity; I stay near Christianity and Hasidism." "The Maytrees" (2007) is Dillard's second novel. The story begins after World War II and tells of a lifelong love between a husband and wife who live in Provincetown, Cape Cod. It was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2008. Dillard's books have been translated into at least 10 languages. Her 1975 Pulitzer-winning book, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek", made Random House's survey of the century's 100 best nonfiction books. The LA Times' survey of the century's 100 best Western novels includes "The Living". The century's 100 best spiritual books (ed. Philip Zaleski) also includes Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. The 100 best essays (ed. Joyce Carol Oates) includes "Total Eclipse," from "Teaching a Stone to Talk". Two of Dillard's books have won Maurice-Edgar Cointreau Prizes for Best Translation in English. "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" won in 1999 and "For the Time Being" in 2002. Both were translated by Sabine Porte.