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276 WesternAmerican Literature way that commentators like Carey McWilliams, Kevin Starr,James Houston, and Joan Didion have rendered the Golden State’s more renowned places. Last year in Coming ofAge in California, a slim but revelatory collection of autobiographical musings, and now in this volume, a prolific assemblage of essays on the culture of California’s great midland, originally published else­ where but gathered here to comprise a kind of regional psychobiography, Haslam has brought into sharp relief the contours of life in the locale of his upbringing. The title essay, reminiscent of Didion’s vignette, “Notes from a Native Daughter” in Slouching Toward Bethlehem, provides an idiosyncratic overview of the region, “in many ways closer to Lubbock or Stillwater than Hollywood,”and delineates the themes which reverberate throughout the book: the agricultural opulence of the Valley farmland which sustains the state at the expense of its primordial ecology; the uneasy nexus of family farmers, migrant workers, and agribusiness conglomerates bound together in economic interdependency; the multiethnic character of the place that has long served the American imagina­ tion as a sanctuary for the dispossessed; the eternal quest for water to quench the agrarian thirst of the Valley’s dry terrain; the parched beauty and sweltering sensuality of the region that beguiles even as it oppresses those “blooded” on the land. Subsequent essays reprise and revise the same subjects. “The Lake that Will Not Die,” “The Kern, My River,” and “The Water Game” interweave environ­ mental and personal history; several pieces consider the vibrant if undervalued literary heritage of the area; others explore the racial tensions and ethnic stratifications ofValley life. Haslam’s voice is most resonant and his vision most luminous when he writes of the evolving geodynamics of the Central California landscape, although the essays which focus on writers offer keen if briefly developed insights. The collection concludes with an unsentimental tribute to the gritty optimism of the region’s pluralistic human culture. Readers entering Haslam’s richly realized world will share the author’s sense of the “palpable sweetness”of the other California even as they face sobering assessments of the damaging forces at work upon it. LIAHNA BABENER Montana State University Horse Medicine and Other Stories. By Rafael Zepeda. (Long Beach, California: Applezaba Press, 1990. 130 pages, $20.00/$10.95.) As I read through the Rafael Zepeda stories, I wished they had been arranged with “Horse Medicine,”“Winnings,”and “Groceries”placed together since they all relate to the Navajo. “Shaft Alley” and “From Panama City to Colon”could follow, giving the collection more continuity. Reviews 277 The best story is “Horse Medicine,” although “Groceries” received the P.E.N. Syndicated Fiction Award. “Horse Medicine”is narrated by a 16-year-old Navajo named Ryderwho accompanies relatives to Indian rodeos, probably run by white men. His voice is illiterate but he captures one’s attention. Our sympathy is with Taffy and Flag, the two roping horses. “Winnings” continues Ryder’s rodeo story with the author’s emphasis upon the white man’s duplicity in dealing with Native Americans. One would do well to be aware of the silent Indian! “Groceries”has a retired Navajo named Walter as the narrator. Regarded by his relatives as “no good,”Walter has pride and endures. He is a silent Indian. The sea stories “Shaft Alley”and “From Panama City to Colón”concern a narrator named Tom who is a wipe on a military transport ship carrying B-52 bombs to Vietnam. Corrupt and whoring seamen predominate in the stories. Beneath the camaradería of the seamen is the author’s criticism of the government’s policy of shipping munitions to these countries. To the author’s credit, he certainly knows his watery geography! The other stories rely upon characters who encounter problems they cannot always solve. The narrator of “Dirt”visits a vacantlot in the citywhere his grandfather’s store once stood and relives his past. “Syzygy” is puzzling. We know that Catalpa has been here before. There are lots of motels similar to those the young couple visit in “The Dead Dog Motel.”‘The Cyclone Racer”is set in an amusement park where the Mexican characters go on...

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