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Article: California dreaming turns to dust: Joan Didion looks at how and why the promise of California failed.(Where I Was From)(Book Review)
- Article from:
- National Catholic Reporter
- Article date:
- April 16, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 National Catholic Reporter. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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WHERE I WAS FROM By Joan Didion Alfred A. Knopf, 226 pages, $23
The always engaging Joan Didion has written a probing account of her California childhood in the Sacramento region. She comes from pioneer stock, one branch of the family having trekked across the Great Plains and the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the Pacific coast in the 1840s. About that same time, another branch made a similar crossing, braving hardship and all the attendant rigors of the daunting journey between the Missouri frontier and the Pacific coast. During that trip her great-great-great grandmother Elizabeth Anthony Reese buried one child, gave birth to another and twice contracted mountain ...