About this item
"A remarkable debut. Valencia writes with a sinuous maturity, a boldness of vision far beyond his years. In Lord of California, this beyond-seeing is literal: wild, impressive, at times menacing invention about what a separatist California might look like begins to look downright prescient, and Valencia's portraitist skill with his characters lifts them off the page, too." -- Ryan McIlvain, author of Elders Set in a future where the United States has dissolved and California is its own independent republic, Lord of California follows the struggles of the Temple family as they work at running a farm on a nationalized land parcel in the central San Joaquin Valley. When the family patriarch, Elliot, dies, it's revealed that he had been keeping five separate families, and in the aftermath of their discovery, his widows and children must come together to keep from losing all they have.
About the Author
Andrew Valencia was born in Fresno, California, and holds a bachelor's degree from Stanford University. After working for a number of years as an EFL teacher in Asia and Central America, he returned to the States to pursue an MFA in fiction from the University of South Carolina. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Ploughshares Blog, Southern Pacific Review, Crack the Spine, Fat City Review, and other publications.
