The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California

About this book

A vivid searching journey into Californias capture of water and soilthe epic story of a peoples defiance of nature and the wonders and ruin it has wrought Mark Arax is from a family of Central Valley farmers a writer with deep ties to the land who has watched the battles over water intensify even as California lurches from drought to flood and back again. In The Dreamt Land he travels the state to explore the one-of-a-kind distribution system built in the 1940s 50s and 60s that is straining to keep up with Californias relentless growth. The Dreamt Land weaves reportage history and memoir to confront the "Golden State" myth in riveting fashion. No other chronicler of the West has so deeply delved into the empires of agriculture that drink so much of the water. The nations biggest farmersthe nut king grape king and citrus queentell their story here for the first time. Arax the native son is persistent and tough as he treks from desert to delta mountain to valley. What he finds is hard earned awe-inspiring tragic and revelatory. In the end his compassion for the land becomes an elegy to the dream that created California and now threatens to undo it.