MICHAEL WALSH: California Dreamin’. “As usual, I was struck by the miracle of it all — but the miracle is visibly fading. . . . I can’t shake the feeling that this is all some dreadful family-tragedy novel — not by Steinbeck, who, for all his social consciousness, understood what had gone into creating California out of a Spanish mission trail, a gold rush, and a great natural port — but by Faulkner: The story of a state who wanted sons, and her sons destroyed her.”