Two California Central Valley natives and former farmers have produced this vibrant book of poetry and art about the San Joaquin Valley they love, where they learned to accept both the bounties and the hazards of the changing seasons. Nels Hanson has received numerous awards for his writing, and Rees Nielsen's painting, poetry and fiction have been widely published in literary magazines.

A timely new edition of a pioneering work in Latino literature, National Book Award nominee Gary Soto's first collection (originally published in 1977) draws on California's fertile San Joaquin Valley, the people, the place, and the hard agricultural work done there by immigrants. In these poems, joy and anger, violence and hope are placed in both the metaphorical and very real circumstances of the Valley. Rooted in personal experiences—of the poet as a young man, his friends, family, and neighbors—the poems are spare but expansive, with Soto's voice as important as ever. This welcome new edition has been expanded with a crucial selection of complementary poems (some previously unpublished) and a new introduction by the author.

A collection of more than 100 short stories about gold mining in California in the mid-1800s

2022 Oregon Book Award Finalist A vivid journey through California's vast rural interior, The Heart of California weaves the story of historian Frank Latta's forgotten 1938 boat trip from Bakersfield to San Francisco with Aaron Gilbreath's trip retracing Latta's route by car during the 2014 drought. Latta embarked on his journey to publicize the need for dams and levees to improve flood control. Gilbreath made his own trip to profile Latta and the productive agricultural world that damming has created in the San Joaquin Valley, to describe the region's nearly lost indigenous culture and ecosystems, and to bring this complex yet largely ignored landscape to life. The Valley is home to some of California's fastest growing cities and, by some estimates, produces 25 percent of America's food. The Valley feeds too many people, and is too unique, to be ignored. To understand California, you have to understand the Valley. Mixing travel writing, historical recreations, western history, natural history, and first-person reportage, The Heart of California is a road-trip narrative about this fascinating region and its most important early documentarian.

Paolo calls Rufus "a Mack truck with no one driving." Rufus is the O'Neil family dog, and he shows up one morning with part of a twenty-dollar bill in his teeth. Twelve-year-old Paolo figures that there must be more where that bill came from, and since his cousin Billy needs to repair a bent wheel on his bike, there's a reason for looking. Soon Paolo, his brother Georgie, and Billy end up in the monsignor's garden behind the Cathedral of San Joaquin, but it's not exactly treasure they find, it's a hand that shoots out of the undergrowth to grab Paolo's neck. The search for the stash leads the boys -- sometimes scared spitless -- on many a byway around Orange Grove City, California, in the summer of 1951. And onto the byway of conscience.

While nearly all of America's major rivers have been compromised, few have been so misused as the San Joaquin. In its comparatively brief history, it has been dammed, diverted, and depleted beyond comprehension. Here, in colourful and informative prose, veteran author Gene Rose identifies the forces and figures who have shaped, altered, and corrupted this once mighty waterway which some now view as "a river betrayed".