The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California

A vivid, searching journey into California's complicated relationship to its water, from the Gold Rush to today—an epic story of the struggle to overcome the constraints of nature

Mark Arax is from a family of Central Valley farmers—a journalist with deep ties to the land, who has watched as the battles over water have intensified even as the state lurches from drought to flood and back again. In The Dreamt Land he travels the state to explore the century-old water distribution system that i...