My bookshelf·Index No. 0082

Gold Fame Citrus

On My Shelf, Not Yet Read

The Southwest has dried out and been evacuated, and a dune sea called the Amargosa is moving east across California, burying towns. Luz, a former poster child for the drought-relief effort, and Ray, an ex-soldier, are squatting in an abandoned starlet’s mansion in Los Angeles when they take in a strange toddler. They head into the desert looking for a colony, and find one, run by a dowser and prophet named Levi who is either a genius or a fraud and possibly both. Watkins grew up in the Mojave, and the invented natural history of the dune sea is the best thing in the book.

Gold Fame Citrus
By Claire Vaye Watkins. Riverhead Books, 2015. 352 pages.