This one was hard to get through and I'm not sure why I made the effort. The author dumps every bit of research he found on California in the novel—long lists of names of people who never show up again, descriptions of plants, even recipes. Famous people show up and disappear with startling rapidity, along with people that the author obviously thought were famous but no longer are. The "story" within the story is about Shane, a New York reporter who one day sees a girl named Alicia boarding a ship for California. They fall in love without exchanging any words, and he follows her west a few months later. He joins the army and fights in the revolution that defeated the Mexicans, then finds the girl, marries her, and sets up a ranch near Los Angeles. There's a bad guy who shows up from time to time, but he's dispatched with singular ease at the end of the book.