The Elusive Eden: A New History of California

Book Description

The Elusive Eden charts the historical development of California, beginning with the evolution of the landscape and climate and the arrival of the first inhabitants, the Indians, through social, political, and environmental controversies of the present and the future. The book portrays a land of remarkable richness and complexity, settled by waves of people from diverse cultures. The text is organized chronologically into 10 parts, each developing a major theme or issue for a particular period in California's history. The first chapter of each part is a narrative that spotlights and dramatizes the personal responses of significant individuals at critical moments of historical change. The authors stress issues of current importance such as: ethnic groups, women, environmental history and social and cultural history.

Customer Reviews:

Great Book!.......2007-03-22

I used this book so much in my California and Politics class. It is very descriptive and helpful. The headings make it easy to study, and know exactly what you are reading about. There are lots of interesting pictures, as well as political cartoons. It was a very helpful book in understanding the diverse and colorful history of California. Read it and check it out for yourself.

History of California.......2000-08-08

I had to use this book for a class I took at the University of California, Santa Barbara (History 177 -- Summer 1999). I thought the book was great in certain areas (prehistoric times, geography, and the native peoples), but deficient in others (water development, railroads, Bear Flag Revolt, gold rush, automobile). Also, California's history is much too complicated to be crammed into this book -- the author should have divided it up regionally, or on a time line to allow himself to get more in depth with this material. Otherwise, if you are interested in a good, yet incomplete overview of the history of the Golden State, read this book!

Elusive Eden Captured.......2000-02-15

History can be exciting, especially when the high points are rendered with such immediacy and clarity. California is both a microcosm and macrocaosm of American History. Richard Rice makes this connection resonant from the original Sutter's Mill gold rush to the current Silicon Valley "gold rush". The themes that define California are U.S. history writ large. Rice lets the reader appreciate California from a variety of personal perspectives: Henry Dana's in "Two Years Before The Mast", Leland Stanford and the other "robber barrons", Hiram Johnson and the reformers, into world war two and the Nisei internees, down through Reagan and the Brown family, and into current times. The history of water rights, which was the basis of the movie Chinatown, becomes a compelling and more accurate story here. The lucid prose is admirably supported by evocative photography. Discover California as it really was and is.

The Natural World of the California Indians (California Natural History Guides)

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AWESOME

The Natural World of the California Indians (California Natural History Guides)
Robert Fleming Heizer , and Albert B. Elasser
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Handbook of the Indians of California (Bulletin (Smithsonian Institution. Bureau of American Ethnology), 78.)
The California Indians: A Source Book, Second Revised and Enlarged edition
The Way We Lived: California Indian Stories, Songs & Reminiscences
Indians of California: The Changing Image
Tribes of California

ASIN: 0520038967

Book Description

This information-packed guide describes patterns of village life, and covers such subjects as Indian tools and artifacts, hunting techniques, and food.

Customer Reviews:

AWESOME.......2004-02-28

THIS A WONDERFUL BOOK FROM A WELL KNOWN AUTHOR ROBERT HEIZER.
THIS BOOK A WEALTH OF INFORMATION ON CALIFORNIA NATIVE AMERICANS
AND THERE CULTURE.
GREAT TO ADD TO YOUR COLLECTION.
A++++

Book Description

The life story of Ishi, the last Yahi Indian, lone survivor of an exterminated tribe, is unique in the annals of North American anthropology. For more than forty years, Theodora Kroeber's biography has captivated readers. Now recent advances in technology make it possible to return to print the 1976 deluxe edition, filled with plates and historic photographs that enhance Ishi's story and bring it to life.
Ishi stumbled into the twentieth century on the morning of August 29, 1911, when, desperate with hunger and terrified of the white murderers of his family, he was found in the corral of a slaughter house near Oroville, California. Finally identified as a Yahi by an anthropologist, Ishi was brought to San Francisco by Professor T. T. Waterman and lived there the rest of his life under the care and protection of Alfred Kroeber and the staff of the University of California's Museum of Anthropology.
Karl Kroeber adds an informative tribute to the text, describing how the book came to be written and how Theodora Kroeber's approach to the project was a product of both her era and her special personal insight and empathy.

Customer Reviews:

HUMANS-COME TOGETHER!.......2007-09-28

ALL humans can benefit from reading this fact based book. ISHI was a real MAN, and his humbleness and genuine qualities are what young people should strive to match!

Good Book, bad binding.......2007-07-23

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and the story of Ishi. However, the binding on the new paperback fell apart before I was half way through it.

very good.......2007-02-10

This book is very enjoyable, informative, and enlightening. If you are interested in Native Americans, this is a must read. It truly describes the last "Wild Indian" that was brought into modern society. It explains both the natural heritage of Ishi along with the typical exploration of finding the last "Wild Indian". Truly, a story that had to be told

An anthropologist on Mars.......2006-03-16

At the beginning of the 20th century a half-starved 50-year-old Indian was found in a remote farm in California. He was the last surving Yaki Indian. Before the arrival of white settlers there had been probably more than 2000 Indians of that tribe in the area. They were wiped out in less than 80 years by the diseases carried by europeans, the reduction of their natural environment and periodical retaliatory expeditions organized by band of vigilantes to revenge a stolen cow or horse or the killing of one white settler. The last surviving Yaki was lucky enough to be "adopted" by the curators of the Museum of Berkeley University. There the Indian lived happily for 5 years, working as janitor and a sort of living exhibit. The anthropologist studied him and his world, and he studied the world of whites, showing a remarkable degree of adaptability to modern American society. He was called Ishi (=man) by the staff of the museum because he always refused to say his own name. Loved by everybody and friend of everybody, he died of the tubercolosis that his natural defence did not recognize. The story was written 50 years after his death by the daughter of the museum's director through the notes of her father (she had never met Ishi). Even being a perfectly scientific book, it has the power of moving of a novel and contains a terrible caveat for the modern man.

The Story of a Man and an Epoch.......2006-01-24

This is a very important book and a very sad book. It tells an extraordinary story of a man who was last man of his tribe. It also an honest history of the white man's inhumanity to the red man in California during the second half of the ninetheenth Century.
The story is: Ishi hid in the mountains nearly all of his life. After his Yahi tribesmen died, he drifted into a small town. He was rescued by an anthropologist and lived the remainder of his short life on the grounds of a San Francisco museum.

Foundations Of Chumash Complexity (Perspectives in California Archaeology)

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Foundations Of Chumash Complexity (Perspectives in California Archaeology)

Manufacturer: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

The Island Chumash: Behavioral Ecology of a Maritime Society
Globalization and the Race for Resources (Themes in Global Social Change)
The Vulnerable Planet: A Short Economic History of the Environment (Cornerstone Books (New York, N.Y.).)
Global Energy Shifts: Fostering Sustainability in a Turbulent Age
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ASIN: 1931745188

Book Description

This volume highlights the latest research on the foundations of sociopolitical complexity in coastal California. The populous maritime societies of southern California, particularly the groups known collectively as the Chumash, have gone largely unrecognized as prototypical complex hunter-gatherers, only recently beginning to emerge from the shadow of their more celebrated counterparts on the Northwest Coast of North America. While Northwest cultures are renowned for such complex institutions as ceremonial potlatches, slavery, cedar plank-house villages, and rich artistic traditions, the Chumash are increasingly recognized as complex hunter-gatherers with a different set of organizational characteristics: ascribed chiefly leadership, a strong maritime economy based on oceangoing canoes, an integrative ceremonial system, and intensive and highly specialized craft production activities. Chumash sites provide some of the most robust data on these subjects available in the Americas. Contributors present stimulating new analyses of household and village organization, ceremonial specialists, craft specializations and settlement data, cultural transmission processes, bead manufacturing practices, and watercraft and the acquisition of prized marine species.

Paradise in Ashes: A Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror, and Hope (California Series in Public Anthropology)

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Really excellent book

Paradise in Ashes: A Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror, and Hope (California Series in Public Anthropology)
Beatriz Manz
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala
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ASIN: 0520246756

Book Description

Paradise in Ashes is a deeply engaged and moving account of the violence and repression that defined the murderous Guatemalan civil war of the 1980s. In this compelling book, Beatriz Manz--an anthropologist who spent over two decades studying the Mayan highlands and remote rain forests of Guatemala--tells the story of the village of Santa María Tzejá, near the border with Mexico. Manz writes eloquently about Guatemala's tortured history and shows how the story of this village--its birth, destruction, and rebirth--embodies the forces and conflicts that define the country today.
Drawing on interviews with peasants, community leaders, guerrillas, and paramilitary forces, Manz creates a richly detailed political portrait of Santa María Tzejá, where highland Maya peasants seeking land settled in the 1970s. Manz describes these villagers' plight as their isolated, lush, but deceptive paradise became one of the centers of the war convulsing the entire country. After their village was viciously sacked in 1982, desperate survivors fled into the surrounding rain forest and eventually to Mexico, and some even further, to the United States, while others stayed behind and fell into the military's hands. With great insight and compassion, Manz follows their flight and eventual return to Santa María Tzejá, where they sought to rebuild their village and their lives.

Customer Reviews:

Really excellent book.......2006-11-04

I bought this to accompany me on a trip to Guatemala. Although it was painful to read, it absorbed me in the country's history in a very enriching way, and altered my perspective considerably. I highly, highly recommend this book.

Yanomami: The Fierce Controversy and What We Can Learn from It (California Series in Public Anthropology)

Average customer rating:

By far the most important book on the controversy

Yanomami: The Fierce Controversy and What We Can Learn from It (California Series in Public Anthropology)
Rob Borofsky
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon
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Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences

ASIN: 0520244044

Book Description

Yanomami raises questions central to the field of anthropology--questions concerning the practice of fieldwork, the production of knowledge, and anthropology's intellectual and ethical vision of itself. Using the Yanomami controversy--one of anthropology's most famous and explosive imbroglios--as its starting point, this book draws readers into not only reflecting on but refashioning the very heart and soul of the discipline. It is both the most up-to-date and thorough public discussion of the Yanomami controversy available and an innovative and searching assessment of the current state of anthropology.
The Yanomami controversy came to public attention through the publication of Patrick Tierney's best-selling book, Darkness in El Dorado, in which he accuses James Neel, a prominent geneticist who belonged to the National Academy of Sciences, as well as Napoleon Chagnon, whose introductory text on the Yanomami is perhaps the best-selling anthropological monograph of all time, of serious human rights violations. This book identifies the ethical dilemmas of the controversy and raises deeper, structural questions about the discipline. A portion of the book is devoted to a unique roundtable in which important scholars on different sides of the issues debate back and forth with each other. This format draws readers into deciding, for themselves, where they stand on the controversy's--and many of anthropology's--central concerns.

Customer Reviews:

By far the most important book on the controversy.......2005-01-24

In 2000 a controversy exploded around numerous, diverse, and very serious allegations about violations of professional ethics and abuses of human rights made in a book by investigative journalist Patrick Tierney, Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon. The present book edited by Dr. Robert Borofsky critically examines the fallout from Tierney's book. This second book is by far the most thorough, penetrating, balanced, and fair assessment of the controversy which is easily the ugliest scandal in the entire history of anthropology. The editor, and all of the six authors who contribute to a series of round table discussions and debates, are to be commended for their constructive approach to this controversy, unlike a few others elsewhere who persist in spreading as smoke screens misinformation, disinformation, and, just plain lies, even in various scientific journals, books, and organizations. Borofsky most perceptively and skillfully provides the broader background, context, implications, and ramifications regarding the controversy, including the AAA Task Force on Darkness in El Dorado and other reactions. Numerous very attractive and meaningful pedagogical devices are included so that the book can be most useful in many different courses on a wide range of topics. As promised on the back cover and elsewhere in the book, "All of the royalties from this book will be donated to helping the Yanomami improve their health care." This is an unprecedented, historic, and revolutionary book which may well contribute to some serious soul searching in anthropology and stimulate some positive transformations in the profession. This book should be read by every instructor and student in anthropology. For more background see http://www.publicanthropology.org.

Dr. Leslie E. Sponsel, Professor, Anthropology, University of Hawai`i

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Choice review

Converting California
James A. Sandos
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Anthropologies and Histories: Essays in Culture, History, and Political Economy
Indians, Missionaries, and Merchants: The Legacy of Colonial Encounters on the California Frontiers
Sitting Bull and the Paradox of Lakota Nationhood (Library of American Biography Series) (2nd Edition) (Library of American Biography)
Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian-Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 1769-1850
The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, & the Rush to Colorado

ASIN: 0300101007

Book Description

This book is a compelling and balanced history of the California missions and their impact on the Indians they tried to convert. Focusing primarily on the religious conflict between the two groups, it sheds new light on the tensions, accomplishments, and limitations of the California mission experience. James A. Sandos, an eminent authority on the American West, traces the history of the Franciscan missions from the creation of the initial one in 1769 until they were turned over to the public in 1836. Addressing such topics as the singular theology of the missions, the role of music in bonding Indians to Franciscan enterprises, the diseases caused by contact with the missions, and the Indian resistance to missionary activity, Sandos not only describes what happened in the California missions but offers a persuasive explanation for why it happened.

Customer Reviews:

Choice review.......2005-08-23

The following review appeared in the February 2005 issue of CHOICE.

42-3615 E78 2003-70398 MARC

Sandos, James A. Converting California: Indians and Franciscans in the missions. Yale, 2004. 251p bibl index afp ISBN 0300101007, $35.00

Historian Sandos (Univ. of Redlands) provides a richly contextualized history of the California missions from their inception under Junipero Serra in 1769 to the time of their secularization in 1836. The author deftly steers between sanctification and vilification of the California mission system by examining not only the material and political goals of the Franciscans, but also their theological and cosmological understandings of the world around them. Sandos applies this same interpretive agenda to the vast array of Native peoples in California. Chapters focus on often-ignored topics such as the role of music in the mission system, the devastating impact of syphilis on Native demographics, and the importance of Native resistance, accommodation, and acceptance of this outside force. The author concludes with the impact of the mission and a discussion of the moral legitimacy of the mission process. While some will not be happy that Sandos eschews partisan judgments against or exonerations of Franciscans and the Spanish system of colonization, his work clearly sheds considerable light on this highly controversial encounter while encouraging even further study, thus serving as a model for future research. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels and libraries. -- R. A. Bucko,S.J., Creighton University

Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860-1920 (California World History Library)

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Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena, 1860-1920 (California World History Library)
Thomas R. Metcalf
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Asia | History | Subjects | Books

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Aden and the Indian Ocean Trade: 150 Years in the Life of a Medieval Arabian Port (Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks)
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ASIN: 0520249461

Book Description

An innovative remapping of empire, Imperial Connections offers a broad-ranging view of the workings of the British Empire in the period when the India of the Raj stood at the center of a newly globalized system of trade, investment, and migration. Thomas R. Metcalf argues that India itself became a nexus of imperial power that made possible British conquest, control, and governance across a wide arc of territory stretching from Africa to eastern Asia. His book, offering a new perspective on how imperialism operates, emphasizes transcolonial interactions and webs of influence that advanced the interests of colonial India and Britain alike. Metcalf examines such topics as law codes and administrative forms as they were shaped by Indian precedents; the Indian Army's role in securing Malaya, Africa, and Mesopotamia for the empire; the employment of Indians, especially Sikhs, in colonial policing; and the transformation of East Africa into what was almost a province of India through the construction of the Uganda railway. He concludes with a look at the decline of this Indian Ocean system after 1920 and considers how far India's participation in it opened opportunities for Indians to be a colonizing as well as a colonized people.

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Judging a book by its cover
Coyote in the sky
Mixed Bag
A bit of a sophomore slump, but still worth a read
Better than Garden

Sky Coyote: A Novel of the Company
Kage Baker
Manufacturer: Harcourt
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Mendoza in Hollywood (The Company)
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The Life of the World to Come (The Company)

ASIN: 0151003548

Amazon.com

Kage Baker's first novel, In the Garden of Iden, was a smart, funny, top-drawer read. Fans will be happy to find out that Baker avoids a sophomore slump with Sky Coyote, the second novel of the Company, and another superbly witty and intelligent book. Baker switches focus in this sequel to Joseph, the immortal cyborg who rescued Iden's heroine, Mendoza, from the dungeons of the Spanish Inquisition. Joseph and Mendoza work for Dr. Zeus, otherwise known as the Company, a 24th-century operation devoted to getting rich off the past. To accomplish this, the Company turns orphans and refugees from the past into super-smart, nigh invincible cyborgs and sends them on missions to save or hide precious paintings, cultural treasures, and genetic information useful to the future world.

Sky Coyote begins in pre-Columbian Mexico, where Joseph and Mendoza are reunited at New World One, an extravagant Company retreat. When European explorers are scheduled to arrive in the New World, the Company dismantles operations, and Joseph is sent to California in 1699 to save a Chumash village lock, stock, and barrel, before Europeans arrive with smallpox and slavery. To prep the Native Americans for their voyage to a Company enclave in Australia, Joseph poses as Uncle Sky Coyote, a trickster-god of the Chumash, and tells them he's there to save them from certain doom at the hands of white men. But can Joseph convince the wary, savvy Chumash labor unions, lodges, and entrepreneurs that he has their best interests at heart, all without screwing up history? And will he patch things up with Mendoza, who still hasn't forgiven him for everything that happened in 1500s England? Kage Baker delivers a terrific story and a worthy sequel with Sky Coyote. --Therese Littleton

Book Description

Can a rich Native american culture be saved from the destruction of white settlement? In the second installment of Kage Baker’s heralded Company series, cyborgs interact, often humorously, with a pre-Columbian Chumash village. “An action-packed but thoughtful read” (Dallas Morning News).

Customer Reviews:

Judging a book by its cover.......2007-06-19

Looking at the cover art, you would get a much different idea of what the book might be about than if you read the short summary on the back. Luckily I read the summary and realized it was a story I would be interested in.

The plot idea is appealing to me, and I think I would have been much more satisfied with it had I read more of this series than just this one book; in this book, you get a snippet of the overall plot - what is happening in basically one mission in the past, rather than a more in depth understanding of the Company as a whole. Perhaps this is done in another book in the series, or perhaps the macro plot is just a construct to allow infinite possibilities of sequels, each looking at a mission in the past.

Regardless, the author's humor is often witty, and the book was enjoyable on it's own, though I don't plan to read any of the other books.

Coyote in the sky.......2007-02-20

This book is more satyrical that it's apparent, and some have misunderstood it. All hepisodes are viewed through Joseph's/Coyote disenchanted eyes, the SPA of the immortals, the all-too modern-thinking Humashup ( with their quarrelling pompous priests), the fundamentalists Chinigchinix (whose monotheism is a bit exaggerated in the novel), the prissiy, squeamish health-freaks of the future. A satire of humanity's flawed ways of coming to terms with themseklves and rthe world, and a clever reflection on religion and the unfortunate effects of enforcing one's revelation to others. And bebneath Joseph/Coyote's cynicism you can feel an heart of compassion and empathy, for humanity and for grief-striken Mendoza, which we shall encounter again in Hollywood. We feel this book prophetic, as another Goat-Cult menaces today's humanity.

Mixed Bag.......2006-12-04

Once again Baker draws us into the world of the Company. But this time, Sky Coyote is not told from the point of view of newbie immortal Mendoza, but from the eyes of Facilitator Joseph, whose tenure with the Company spans a lot more than a couple hundred years, but goes back more than 20,000.

It is Joseph's task (along with help from other fellow immortals, including Mendoza) to bring an entire 18th century Native American Chumash village into the Company's fold. Disguised as the Chumash deity Sky Coyote, Joseph attempts to convince the entire village of Humashup that danger is on its way in the form of white men and that he and his "sky spirits" are going to take them off somewhere to safety.

Sky Coyote was a mixed bag as stories go. Joseph's interaction with the Chumash was somewhat interesting (especially the Chumash concept of theatre), but somehow it just wasn't enough, by itself, for me to need to turn the pages. What did pull me through the story was the background on Joseph. Sky Coyote really delved into Joseph's past. Revealing how he became an immortal and giving us a fairly good, if somewhat cursory, introduction into the Company's sordid dealings with "the past".

Overall, Sky Coyote had enough there to make me want to continue with the sequels, but as a stand-alone tale, it left a bit to be desired.

A bit of a sophomore slump, but still worth a read.......2005-03-06

Kage Baker's novels and stories of the Company are usually a joy to read, and while Sky Coyote is less fun and more slog than any other entry I've read, it still has its strong points. The novel's signal flaw is that it is actually telling two different stories, one interesting, the other more of a history lesson. The first is the story of the interactions between the Company's immortal cyborgs and their mortal 24th century bosses. This is fascinating stuff- Baker paints a portrait of a future where virtually all the pleasures of life have been legislated away and the people are bland, whiny, fearful children. The operatives are shocked that these are the masters for whose benefit they've spent millennia storing up rarities and treasures. This part of the book also offers dark hints as to what the Company's loyal workers may find waiting for them in 2355, the cutoff year for their knowledge of history.

The other story deals with the efforts of Joseph, a 20,000-year-old operative, to uproot an Indian village and move them for observation by the Company. It has its moments but too often feels like a tutorial on the lives of the Chumash rather than a full-fledged story about. It's not that they aren't an interesting people; it's just not what I was expecting from this novel, and there's too much of it. Still, the other half of the story is interesting, and Baker's writing is as polished as ever. 3 stars, or 6/10.

Better than Garden.......2004-05-27

See, I don't get it. Everyone says that Sky Coyote is their least favourite of Baker's books. Why? Is it because Joseph is the narrator? Is it because it doesn't deal with European-based history? Is it because somehow Baker wrote less beautifully than she usually does? I don't know. I thought it much better than Garden of Iden.

In Sky Coyote, Joseph and Mendoza are sent to California to retrieve an entire tribe of people before white men can get at them with land grabs and smallpox. Baker knows California well: she lives there, so everything in the book has that touch of authenticity. Although she can't give the Chumash language that same kind of twist she gave Elizabethan English, she doesn't fall into the trap that most authors do with American Indians: namely, overly-simplify the language they speak. Of the three factions in the book (future mortals, immortals, and the Chumash), the Chumash come out most human, and that is a feat in itself when the book is narrated by an immortal. And speaking of immortals, I like Joseph so much better than Mendoza! She's stubborn, straightforward, and believes in one thing and one thing only. Fairly one-dimensional, even after having read Garden. Joseph ponders things, has faults and fears, and is much older and remembers far back to the Stone Age of Europe, whence he came. Yet he's able to work despite his fears. Admittedly, he largely ignores them. But isn't that what we do most of the time?

I suppose what I liked best about the book, though, is the fact that it deals with the fallibility of Dr. Zeus and pokes fun at modern society in a way Garden did not. Introduced is the fact that Dr. Zeus has only provided the immortals with historical information up until a certain year in the future, where supposedly paradise on earth will have been achieved and the immortals can rest from their labours. Also added are the concept of the Enforcers, immortals who were recruited to kill raging hoardes during the Stone Age, but then lost their necessity and slowly vanished somehow. The idea is that Dr. Zeus can make mistakes. I loved it. Here is a company that saves you from certain death in the past and makes you immortal. You're trained to believe it's a wise and benevolent power. What happens when you begin to doubt? It's great stuff. Better than that are the future mortals who come to the past to oversee the Chumash tribe's excavation. They are like stretched-thin overly-exaggerated people of today. They play video games all of the time. Their vocabulary is extremely limited. They frown on controlled substances, are afraid of the Chumash "savages", and don't want to harm anything, even grass. They are each super-specialists, a genius in his own field but a doddering idiot about anything else. They have no sense of the history they are trying to preserve. It's just vindicating for a historian to see, as it feels that way today. Few now care about what happened before-- they are willfully ignorant, perpetuating the same mistakes and thinking they are original. Oh, I liked that.

There is, of course, Baker's perpetual theme of single crazy zealots perpetuating murders for a jealous God. She has the Chumash encounter a new monotheistic cult which is, of course, villainous, persuasive, and stops at nothing to gain converts. Much like in Garden's Spain. Or in any of her books. No redeeming qualities, oh no. To be honest, the only way I can get through these parts is that she isn't altogether blatant about them. The story still functions in the characters' minds, and they are believable. So I can still think that God is trying to say something to Joseph, that there is more than the Company.

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