Overview

A personal portrayal of rural and small-town Westerners adhering to Old West values while resisting or assimilating to New West global realities. Drawing from his San Joaquin Valley childhood, a career devoted to studying the West, and attentive interviews with a wide range of ethnically diverse people from the greater area, Bergen presents an intimate portrait of an Old West in conflict with the New, and traces the way traditional values-the code of the cowboy, the work ethic of the farmers-sometimes clash with and at other times adjust to a changing world. Set in California's Great Central Valley, the book offers a personal portrayal of rural and small-town Westerners, several with ties to Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona, Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Texas, but all shaped as was the author by California's Great Valley. All are immigrants, migrants, their children, or grandchildren whose lives intertwine with the author's-rich, poor, and in-between, as well as those of several races and ethnicities: Chicanos, Mexicans, African Americans, Italians, Asians, Native Americans, Scots-Irish descendants of Steinbeck's Okies, and Basques of the author's own heritage.

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9781948908061

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Reviews

.. .insightful... Begon's memories and interview ground larger historical events... --Publishers Weekly .. . a tour of the interior West worth taking. --Kirkus Reviews

.. . a tour of the interior West worth taking. --Kirkus Reviews .. .insightful... Bergon's memories and interviews ground larger historical events... --Publishers Weekly

.. .insightful... Begon's memories and interview ground larger historical events... --Publishers Weekly

In 12 prose portraits of people and place, western novelist and historian Bergon portrays the marriage of Old West spirit with New West realities...a way of life and culture he believes to be misunderstood and misreported...Bergon sets this record straight with close-up stories of people with whom he grew up and befriended in the San Joaquin Valley, homeland of his own Basque progenitors.--Booklist ...insightful... Bergon's memories and interviews ground larger historical events... --Publishers Weekly ... a tour of the interior West worth taking. --Kirkus Reviews The introduction's pithy summary of how the mythology of the 'Old West' both collides with and overlaps with the realities of the 'New West' is compelling and rich...--San Francisco Review of Books In 12 prose portraits of people and place, western novelist and historian Bergon portrays the marriage of Old West spirit with New West realities...a way of life and culture he believes to be misunderstood and misreported... Bergon sets this record straight with close-up stories of people with whom he grew up and befriended in the San Joaquin Valley, homeland of his own Basque progenitors. --Booklist ... 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

Author Information

Frank Bergon is a critically acclaimed novelist, critic, and essayist whose writings focus primarily on the history and environment of the American West. He was born in Ely, Nevada, and grew up on a ranch in Madera County in California's San Joaquin Valley. He has taught at the University of Washington and for many years at Vassar College, where he is Professor Emeritus of English. He is a member of the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.

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