The Ranch Papers: A California Memoir

From dust Jane Hollister Wheelwright has done a very daring thing, for The Ranch Papers is a work of art relying almost entirely on concrete description . . . What Wheelwright has done is to immortalize what will soon be destroyed. The Hollister Ranch, thirty-nine thousand acres near Santa Barbara, had to be sold at her father's death. Within it she rode her horse through an extraordinary variety of landscape; she has surveyed and experienced all seasons and weathers in a long farewell. This is the record of a passionate love affair with the land. She raises pure description to a kind of meridian where it is burned into the reader's consciousness, never to be forgotten, and the reader taken deep into a physical journey will know by the end that it is also a spiritual one - May Sarton.