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Title: Searching for Steinbeck's Sea of Cortez: A Makeshift Expediton Along Baja's Desert Coast by Andromeda Romano-Lax ISBN: 1-57061-255-2 Publisher: Sasquatch Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.25 (4 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: A Mixed Bag
Comment: Parts of this book are highly interesting, but others would have better been omitted. What I liked most about the book were the author's insights into the book that inspired her and her husband's journey - Steinbeck's Log from the Sea of Cortez. For anyone who shares a fascination with the Log from the Sea of Cortez, as I do, the author provides valuable background information on the book and the trip that inspired it. On the downside, the author seems fixated on trashing her brother-in-law, who piloted the boat her family used in attempting to re-create Steinbeck's journey. Obviously there was a personality conflict here, and her extended diatribes (which seemingly take up a full third of the book) seem mean-spirited and unwarranted. The book would have been vastly better if all of this material had been removed.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Sea of Cortez - Searching for the spirit of Ed Ricketts
Comment: This was a great read! I have been to many of the places in the late 1960s and early 1970s that Romano-Lax visited, and I can vouch for the accuracy of her descriptions. I admire her courage (or possibly foolhardiness) in going on such an odyssey with her husband, two young children and a mentally questionable captain who also happened to be her brother-in-law. Oddly, I can identify with being with a mentally deranged person in Baja California. I was also in that same fix in 1968 when I joined a zoology field trip to San Felipe, Baja California Norte, only to find that one of my companions was seriously depressed to the point of being suicidal (it later turned out that he was on drugs). Travel to the Sea of Cortez seems to result in such strange associations.
I used to own an old copy of Steinbeck and Ricketts that I had been given for cleaning up a storage shed. It was the only book in the shed and I was surprised to find it. I fingered through Ed Ricketts' descriptions and photographs of porcelain crabs and murex shells. I read the text and pondered Steinbeck's philosophical diatribes. But most of all it made me want to go to Baja. Within a few years of my discovery of the book I traveled to northern Baja three times and later made an extensive trip as far south as La Paz in Baja Sur. Despite the problems, Baja left its mark on me and I never regretted any time that I spent there. My main grief is that I missed a trip to Cabo San Lucas in 1971 that I had an opportunity to take.
The mangroves, the beauties and problems of Bahia Concepción, Mullegé, La Paz, Loreto, the Colorado River delta and Golfo de Santa Clara are well known to me and Romano-Lax has described each of these so well that I almost felt that I was back on the beach smelling the salt air and watching v-shaped formations of pelicans as they seemed to float almost effortlessly over the surging tide.
Ed Ricketts would have approved of this book. Although he never liked to get his head wet, he was apparently most alive when wading in the surf and tidepools. In some ways this book is more a tribute to him than to John Steinbeck, but in this case you really can't separate them.
If you are at all interested in the sea and/or Baja California, you need to read "Searching for Steinbeck's Sea of Cortez: A Makeshift Expedition along Baja's Desert Coast." It is the next best thing to going there yourself!
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Rating: 5
Summary: Steinbeck (and Ed Ricketts) would love it.
Comment: This is an ambitious book, well done. Its special beauty comes from Romano-Lax's ability to weave together so many elements into an enticing, captivating whole. There's the travel narrative, of course, with a string of adventures (and misadventures) involving her family -- including 5-year-old son Aryeh and 2-year-old daughter Tziporah -- and the challenges presented by an increasingly unstable brother-in-law who's also their boat's captain. There's the literary element, presenting new perspectives on John Steinbeck's Sea of Cortez explorations with buddy Ed Ricketts and fresh insights into their relationship. Toss in science, natural history, environmental issues, glimpses of Baja California's rich culture, and marvelous descriptions that give a strong sense of place. Then add in Romano-Lax's search for answers, her desire to understand how the Sea of Cortez has changed since Steinbeck's time, and, finally, her own shifting perspectives on what it means to know a place (or "know" anything) -- and the many ways of knowing. In the end, Romano-Lax's travels are multi-dimensional: across the Sea of Cortez, through time, and -- perhaps most important of all -- internally. The trip was well worth taking and I savored it from start to finish.
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Title: The Log from the Sea of Cortez (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) by John Steinbeck, Edward Flanders Ricketts ISBN: 0140187448 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 November, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Forgotten Peninsula: A Naturalist in Baja California by Joseph Wood Krutch ISBN: 0816509875 Publisher: University of Arizona Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 1986 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: With Steinbeck in the Sea of Cortez: A Memoir of the Steinbeck/Ricketts Expedition by Sparky Enea, Audry Lynch ISBN: 0944627560 Publisher: Sand River Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 1991 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Into a Desert Place: A 3000 Mile Walk Around the Coast of Baja California by Graham Mackintosh ISBN: 0393312895 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 April, 1995 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Almost an Island: Travels in Baja California by Bruce Berger ISBN: 0816519021 Publisher: University of Arizona Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $16.05 |
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