Washoe County Library System

Diego de la Vega, the son of an aristocratic Spanish landowner and a Shoshone mother, returns to California from school in Spain to reclaim the hacienda on which he was raised and to seek justice for the weak and helpless.

"Joan Didion's electrifying first novel is a haunting portrait of a marriage whose wrong turns and betrayals are at once absolutely idiosyncratic and a razor-sharp commentary on the history of California. Everett McClellan and his wife, Lily, are the great-grandchildren of pioneers, and what happens to them is a tragic epilogue to the pioneer experience, a story of murder and betrayal that only Didion could tell with such nuance, sympathy, and suspense."--...

Sold to a human trafficker after her village is devastated by famine, 10-year-old Sixiang, arriving in 19th-century America with the profits from her sale and a single photograph of her absent father, makes her way through an unforgiving new world in hopes of reuniting her family. "A Chinese railroad worker and his young daughter—sold into servitude—in 19th century California search for family, fulfillment, and belonging in a violent new land...