West of the West
Subtitle: dreamers, believers, builders, and killers in the Golden State
By: Mark Arax.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2009
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 347
ISBN-13: 9781586483906
Subjects: Arax, Mark, -- 1956- -- Travel -- California; California -- Description and travel; California -- History
Description: In the tradition of Joan Didion, Arax combines journalism, essay, and memoir to capture social upheaval as well as the sense of being rooted in a community. This new collection finds a different drama rising out of each confounding landscape: a portrait of one family from Oaxaca, through harrowing border crossings and brutal raisin harvests; right-wing Christians and Jews form a strange pact that tries to silence debate on the War on Terror; Lamont, the inspiration for the town in the Grapes of Wrath, has but one Okie left, who tells Arax his life story as he drives to a funeral to bury one more Dust Bowl migrant; in Humboldt County, the old hippies are battling the new hippies over "pollution pot." Arax pieces together the murder-suicide at the heart of a rotisserie chicken empire, and provides a moving epilogue to the murder of his own father.--From publisher description.