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Bergon presents a powerful array of rural and small-town Westerners who often see themselves as part of a region and a way of life most Americans aren't aware of or don't understand, their voices unheard, their stories untold. In these essays, Westerners from the diverse heritage of the San Joaquin Valley include California's legendary Fred Franzia, the maker of the world's best-selling Charles Shaw wines dubbed "Two-Buck Chuck," and Darrell Winfield, a Dust Bowl migrant and lifelong working cowboy who for more than thirty years reigned as the iconic Marlboro Man. Their voices help us understand the complexities of today's rural West, where Old West values intersect with New West realities. This is the West (and America today) - a region in conflict with itself.
Reviews
"... a tour of the interior West worth taking." - Kirkus Reviews
"...insightful... Bergon's memories and interviews ground larger historical events..." - Publishers Weekly
"With a novelist's fine gifts for character and scene, a historian's depth of perspective, and a local's intimate knowledge and love, Frank Bergon leads us through California's Big Valley, where the past lies entwined with the present and every critical tension in modern America plays out in its most distilled form." - Miriam Horn, author of Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman: Conservation Heroes of the American Heartland
"Novelist and critic Frank Bergon paints a remarkable portrait of life in California's Great Central Valley through his loving sketches of rural and small-town Westerners." - Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University, author of Colored People: A Memoir
"No one grasps the astonishing diversity of the American West better than Frank Bergon.... Bergon weaves a Breughel-like tapestry of today's rural West. And he does so in prose insightful, judicious, even amusing-as crisply restrained and wryly revealing as the figures it describes. Once started, I dare you (Western style) to try to put this book down!" - Lee Clark Mitchell, author of Late Westerns: The Persistence of a Genre
"With the perspective and compassion of a long-gone native son, Frank Bergon returns to his boyhood home in California's San Joaquin Valley to understand the contemporary West. He introduces us to antigovernment ranchers, disappointed writers, successful physicians, and enterprising farmers..... Bergon's beautifully drawn portraits capture a slice of the twenty-first-century West where old values are tightly held, idiosyncrasies are gently endured, and change is acknowledged, if not always embraced." - Martha A. Sandweiss, Professor of History, Princeton University, author of Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line
Illustrations | 6 black & white photos |
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Pages | 264 |
Dimensions | 216 x 140 x 28 |
Date Published | 30 Mar 2019 |
Publisher | University of Nevada Press |
Subject/s | History   Prose: non-fiction   |
- Introduction
- Part I: Working the Dirt
- 1. The Vision of Two-Buck Chuck 15
- 2. Illegal Immigrant to Valley Farmer 40
- 3. Basque Dirt 68
- 4. Drought in the Garden of the Sun 81
- Part II: Western Voices in the Great Valley
- 5. Valley Tolerance 109
- 6. Black Ranch Girl 119
- 7. Chicano Vet 128
- 8. New Woman Warrior 139
- 9. A Valley Indian's Search for Roots 152
- 10. Native American Okie 167
- Part III: Marlboro Country
- 11. Rebellion in Marlboro Country 185
- 12. West of California: The Marlboro Man 201
- Acknowledgments 253
- About the Author 255