Looks like a really interesting book - they do cover the remote bits of Oregon, right? There is some incredible country out there - it can feel a bit creepy to be so far from anything.
Yes, the "empty quarter" or "outback" of Oregon is mentioned, especially the amazing challenges of census workers in the region.
If you like geography, this book is a good read. It's a bit dated, having been written in the early 1990s, but this, in my opinion, turns out to be a good thing. It gives us some great glimpses of how isolated these communities were and I'm sure the Internet has since changed this considerably.
Pity there's no Kindle version:-/