Mary Austin
The Ford
$19.95, £13.95 paperback
9780520207578
Available Now
440 pages, 5-1/2 x 8-1/4 inches,
May 1997, Available worldwide
Also in: California & The West: Literature
May 1997, Available worldwide
Also in: California & The West: Literature
Mary Austin's 1917 novel illuminates one of the crucial issues in California history—the usurpation of water from the Owens Valley. Ranging from the eastern Sierra to the financial district in San Francisco, the plot portrays the frenzied speculation in land and resources, labor protests, and feminist organizing of the time, exemplified in the successful efforts of an independent young woman to buy back her family's Owens Valley ranch.
"[Mary Austin] had a bold and original mind. . . . Of her novels, The Ford, which deals with the battle for the water of the Owens Valley, [is] perhaps the best."—Carey McWilliams, New York Times
"The great social and commercial plot . . . is strongly handled and conveys more than any other American fiction since Frank Norris what Mrs. Austin calls the 'epic quality of the west.'"—J. Macy, Dial
"The great social and commercial plot . . . is strongly handled and conveys more than any other American fiction since Frank Norris what Mrs. Austin calls the 'epic quality of the west.'"—J. Macy, Dial
"Feminist to the core, . . . over the years Mary Austin produced some skilled and interesting fiction. . . . Her evocative poetic portraits of California and the Southwest . . . are one and all tours de force: prose poems of vision and grace, in which perception, intuition, and mystical insight are realized and presented through metaphor, cadenced language, and exquisite precision of detail."—Kevin Starr, Inventing the Dream
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