Pear Season

by Sally Small

These beautiful short stories chronicle a family's life in the Sacramento Delta, a flat expanse of tangled waterways and islands in California's Central Valley. It is a farming life of hopeful springs, backbreaking summers in the orchards and golden autumns, a time for fishing, duck hunting and raising children. Pressures from urbanization and water users in more populated parts of the state are conspiring to drain the water from the Sacramento River and its fragile waterways. The cowboys, taco truck owners, hunters, pear pickers and pot farmers who populate these stories show that it is more than water that the Delta is losing. It is a way of life.

112 pages, Paperback

First published June 13, 2013

Reviews

[Kelan O'Connell · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a word: Lovely.

4.5 stars actually.

Set in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, these beautifully crafted interconnected short stories will leave you feeling as though you know this place and its people intimately.

Told through several different decades and different (though often connected) voices, each story is a carefully crafted gem on its own. Strung together, they make for a really wonderful read.

[Janet Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Couldn't love this book more. These beautiful short stories capture the life in California I remember from my childhood. A life that still exists on a lesser scale because agribusiness has stomped out so much of it. This book is an American jewel. Don't miss it.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Realistic, gentle and nostalgic but never merely sentimental, these short stories set in the California delta country present some memorable characters living a vanishing kind of rural life.