Hi, it’s Vanessa, your ENLIGHTENMENT host

Here’s the latest pick for my bimonthly book club of fiction/non-fiction focused on the Golden State.

Along with the book, I invite a special guest to each club meeting, someone who is an expert or very connected to the theme of the book and can answer our questions about the topic. So even if you haven’t finished / opened the book, you can still be part of the conversation.

Because we’re officially supposed to be in California’s rainy season now, I’ve picked The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California by Mark Arax, a Fresno-based writer and journalist.

Along with discussing the book, I’m inviting an expert from California’s Department of Water Resources to come talk about it with us. I’m going to ask about the rain forecast for 2025, the dams coming down, and how we’re prepping our water supply for more climate changes, Please bring your own so we can have a good chat about thhis new addition to the bookshelf of California nonfiction classics.

Below is a summary of The Dreamt Land..

Sign up here on the Eventbrite link and we’ll save you a seat.

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Author 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 California's relentless growth.

This is a heartfelt, beautifully written book about the land and the people who have worked it--from gold miners to wheat ranchers to small fruit farmers and today's Big Ag. Since the beginning, Californians have redirected rivers, drilled ever-deeper wells and built higher dams, pushing the water supply past its limit.

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 nation's biggest farmers--the nut king, grape king and citrus queen--tell their story here for the first time.

It is a tale of politics and hubris in the arid West, of imported workers left behind in the sun and the fatigued earth that is made to give more even while it keeps sinking. But when drought turns to flood once again, all is forgotten as the farmers plant more nuts and the developers build more houses.

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.