Home Fires, Volume I: The Past - Historical Fiction Novel | Family Saga & American Life Story | Perfect for Book Clubs & History Enthusiasts

Being a big fan of Sunder, Bruce Haley's book of photos on the collapse of the Soviet Union, I was excited to see that he was tackling my home state of California. From the cover image of a pile of sagebrush in the middle of a tilled field that always tricks my subconscious into thinking it is a photo of dead Highland Cattle to the final image of the end of the road and a sign that proclaims it so, the book is filled with evocative images of a desolate, degraded land far from the picture postcard images of tourist-California.Stretching from just north of Los Angels to just south of Sacramento, the San Joaquin Valley is one of the world's most productive agricultural regions and as a direct result has terrible water issues, from drought to contamination, and some of the worst air quality in the nation. Haley's book does not shy away from this, it highlights it. There are no lush fields and bountiful crops, instead there is devastation, poverty and emptiness rendered in a muted palette. Yet his composition, his capture of the play of light on earth and water and the ruins of human habitation finds beauty and makes the viewer pause to examine the image and to consider the effects and high cost of our modern lifestyle on the land.Be sure to read the opening essay because Haley writes beautifully. The story he tells is rich and emotional and connects us to the images as the photographer is connected, for this was his home, his childhood, and his memories of them reveal a depth of meaning and conflicted emotion that shouldn't be overlooked.I should also mention that looking at the book again in combination with Home Fires Vol. II, which just came out, creates a continuum moving up into the far northern reaches of California where Haley makes his home now. Beautiful and wild, the other side of the agricultural landscape coin.