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Apr 25, 2016otterno11 rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Claire Vaye Watkins’s writing is shimmering and evocative, painting a believable and yet magical vision of the future, one which deals equally in science and speculation, the physical and the emotional. In her gripping story, the mummified, depopulated remains of Los Angeles bake under an eternal drought, some years after the water ran out. Young couple Luz Dunn (growing up the human face of the belated efforts to fight desertification in California) and Ray (a laidback surfer former soldier) live in some formerly decadent starlet’s mansion while scraping by like the other destitute folk who still cling on in the city. The title refers to the Midwestern born Ray’s assessment of fickle Californians- who came to the state in search of gold, of fame, of citrus, but were never content with what they had. When the trackless dunes of the Amargosa, an inexplicable new desert, a sea of sand that has claimed the Central Valley and much of the southwest from Phoenix to Sacramento, forces the majority of the population to flee north or east to greener pastures, the government cracks down on these refugees, known as “mojavs;” echoes of the Okies who fled to California to much abuse in an other, earlier catastrophe. When Luz and Ray snatch Ig, an ill treated toddler from the camp of some local scavengers, they finally decide to risk it all by crossing the sands of the Amargosa to places where there is still water. Watkin’s infuses her writing with an empathetic pathos, each of her characters feeling as real and as fleshed out as the desert world she creates, and as full of deceit and mystery. Out in the Amargosa, it is said, live a cult of survivors led by an ex-Mormon dowser who can summon up water from nowhere and who promises a bohemian counter cultural freedom from the society that abandoned California to the sands and refuses to save them, but at what cost? The Amargosa itself, it seems, is their home and the future. The shifting viewpoints of Luz, Ray, and even the various citizens of the desert compound allow all of their various experiences to show how everything can be viewed in different ways, even the vast deserts of nature itself.