Alta California: From San Diego to San Francisco, A Journey on Foot to Rediscover the Golden State

- Blurb -

For fans of Joan Didion and Rebecca Solnit, Robert Macfarlane, Jon Krakauer, Bruce Chatwin and John Vaillant, with echoes of Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods and Tony Horwitz's A Voyage Long and Strange. "Neely is a graceful, subtle writer with a sharp eye for the easily missed details of his surroundings."-Outside MagazineNeely's first book, Coast Range, was a finalist for both the John Burroughs Award and the Firecracker AwardAlta California is a surprising weave of past and present, and of natural and human history, one unexpected association and serendipitous encounter following upon the next.The goal of Neely's walk (and the book) was to rediscover the home and heritage of the 39 million people that live in California. He revisited the sites the expedition scouted and named to explore how the landscape they "discovered" [stole] is now both unrecognizable and the same. On his trek, Neely also visited eight of the twenty-one missions that sprang up in the expedition's wake, learning about their deadly conversion of California's native population.Published in time for July 14, 2019, the 250th anniversary of the Portola expedition, This book has the potential to be required reading in California, finding its way to all public and high school libraries and to the shelves of history buffs, natural history lovers, and travelogue enthusiasts.