Other California

This expanded edition of The Other California, originally published in 1990, contains nineteen essays (six of them new to this collection) on the landscape, literature, and life in the Great Central Valley of California. The Valley, a vast, flat patchwork of fields and orchards, has become the richest farming region in the history of the world. It also has a rich literary tradition: William Saroyan, Joan Didion, William Everson, Maxine Hong Kingston, Gary Soto, and Richard Rodriguez were all raised in this agricultural heartland. Haslam's collection represents the experience of living in the Valley through a variety of writings; some are personal, some regional, others literary. Many of these essays were originally published in national magazines; as a group, they offer readers a fine collection of writings on the landscape and literature of California's Great Central Valley.