Big Dreams

The land of opportunity, a golden Eden, the last frontier. What is this place that has given rise to countless metaphors but can still quicken the imagination? For Bill Barich the question became a quest when he awakened to the fact that home was no longer New York, where he had grown up, but California, to which he had been lured twenty years earlier by the promise of infinite possibility. Now, in this account of his journey from California's far north to the Mexican border, he captures the true nature of the state behind the stereotypes. Barich describes an amazing diversity among people who have staked a claim to California's promise: from a Yurok Indian hairdresser in a reservation Bingo parlor, to the head of the state's largest real-estate firm, to the "Dean" of California prison wardens, who counts Charles Manson among his charges. Woven through these stories are figures from California's past (John Muir, Robert Louis Stevenson, and John Sutter, to name only a few) and vividly rendered history of the various regions Barich traversed. Big Dreams is as rich, complex, and captivating as the Golden State it explores.