Podcast summary

"Crimes litter the floor of California's great Central Valley like fallen plums . . . Old ties of blood, friendship, and memory are harshly tested . . . but hope takes root in the valley's generous yet unforgiving soil." (D.J. Waldie)

Participant(s) Bio

Aris Janigian is author of two novels, Bloodvine, and its sequel, Riverbig. He also co-authored, along with April Greiman, Something from Nothing, a book on the philosophy of design. He was a contributing writer for WEST, the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine, and from 1992-2005 was a Senior Professor of Humanities at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. In 2004 he was a finalist for the William Saroyan International Writing Prize from Stanford University, and in 2006 received the Anahid Literary Award from Columbia University. He lives in Los Angeles, but returns to the Central Valley seasonally to pack and ship wine grapes.

Rick Wartzman is director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University, an Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation and a columnist for BusinessWeek magazine. Previously, he spent two decades as a reporter and editor at the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. He is the co-author, with Mark Arax, of The King of California: J. G. Boswell and the Making of a Secret American Empire. A bestseller, it was named one of the 10 best nonfiction books of 2003 by the Los Angeles Times and one of the 10 best books of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle. It also won, among other honors, a California Book Award and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing.

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