The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 pushed a shocked America into WWII. Few Americans were unmarked by what followed. Marianne Wiggins’ epic new novel ‘Properties of Thirst’ immerses readers into the life of one California ranching family in the aftermath of the attack. The book is a poignant love story, a family saga, and a portrayal of political events shaping personal lives. ‘History will always find you’ is Wiggins’ persistent theme. The building of a Japanese American internment camp and the water wars of the Owens Valley are how history finds this corner of California.
The story is set in Lone Pine, a tiny town nestled between the Sierra and Inyo Mountain ranges where many Hollywood Westerns have been filmed. Mt. Whitney stands tall in the distance. This idyllic location is where Wiggins begins her novel.
Rocky Rhodes had inherited his father’s fortune when he was a young man and transformed himself from an elite educated Manhattanite to a rugged California rancher. He built a beautiful adobe home in Lone Pine for his bride Lou. They adorned their home with fine furniture, rugs, paintings, and bookshelves that included Rocky’s favorite authors: Emerson and Thoreau. When his wife died of polio, and Rocky’s grief was raw, his sister moved West to help him raise his three-year-old twins, Stryker and Sunny.
In the decades since Rocky had moved West, the Los Angeles Water corporation had been buying the water rights of properties around Lone Pine, making farming untenable. But Rocky won’t sell his water rights. Through litigation and civil disobedience, Rocky has been battling L.A. Water to save the land he loves. “You can’t save what you don’t love” is the opening line and another recurring theme. Rocky detests L.A. Water for diverting the Owens River to Los Angeles decades earlier. He had watched Owens Lake dry up, asthma rates rise, and wildlife habitat wither.
After Pearl Harbor, the citizens of Lone Pine learn that the United States government will build a Japanese American internment camp called Manzanar, adjacent to Rocky’s property. The government sends a young lawyer named Schiff to design, develop and manage the camp. Ten thousand Japanese Americans from San Francisco and other places in the West will soon be incarcerated. Schiff succeeds in building the camp but eventually loathes the injustice and covertly helps the Japanese Americans. The Rhodes family and the Lone Pine community must also decide how to respond. Meanwhile, Schiff falls in love with Rocky’s grown daughter, Sunny, a rancher, gifted cook, and compelling character.
Wiggins has created a remarkable novel. (All the more remarkable as she overcame a stroke to finish it with help from her daughter, Lara Porzak.) Wiggins sketches her characters in rich nuance and captures California’s natural beauty in reverent detail. Readers are transported into the ethos and spirit of the 1940s American West. Though the family story is front and center, Wiggins illuminates the environmental despoilment and racial prejudice that have plagued our past. ‘Properties of Thirst’ is a superb saga of this history that always finds us.
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