BayTree Books

Nothing Left in My Hands: The Issei of a Rural California Town, 1900–1942
Kazuko Nakane; Foreword by Naomi Hirahara

Nothing Left in My Hands is a moving portrait of the lives of early Japanese immigrants in Pajaro Valley, California. Regarded as highly skilled berry growers, the Issei—first-generation Japanese immigrants—were instrumental in the development of strawberry farming in the region....

Jazz Idiom: Blueprints, Stills and Frames
The Jazz Photography of Charles L. Robinson; Poetic Takes and Riffs by Al Young

Jazz Idiom showcases the intimate photography of Charles L. Robinson. A friend to many of the jazz musicians photographed, he often caught them in moments of candor: Charles Mingus, goateed and pensive, hunched over a Steinway, phrases dancing in his...

Edges of Bounty: Adventures in the Edible Valley
William Emery; Photographs by Scott Squire; Foreword by National Public Radio’s “Kitchen Sisters”

Join photographer Scott Squire and writer William Emery as they meander—bewildered, impressionable, and wry—through the roads, back roads, and backwaters of America's greatest agricultural valley. Leaving behind the packaged comforts of supermarkets and restaurants, the pair roamed California's Central Valley...

Where Light Takes Its Color from the Sea: A California Notebook
James D. Houston;
 Foreword by Alan Cheuse

Taking inspiration from California's breathtaking landscapes, history, and distinctive ways of life, Where Light Take Its Color from the Sea reveals a writer's keen appreciation of place. This selection of James D. Houston's essays and short stories illuminates the themes...

Walking Tractor And Other Country Tales
Bruce Patterson

Imagine driving a tractor at fifteen miles per hour on a highway. "Walking tractor" is just one of the odd jobs Bruce Patterson has gotten good at. Set in northern California's Anderson Valley, these personal essays tell of Patterson's love...

Tree Barking: A Memoir
Nesta Rovina

As a home health therapist, Nesta Rovina has seen and heard it all: a stroke victim who learned to roll off her bed at night to avoid getting caught in the crossfire of rival gangs and drug dealers; a man...

Ticket to Exile
Adam David Miller

At age nineteen, A. D. Miller sat in a jail cell. His crime? He passed a white girl a note that read, "I would like to get to know you better." For this he was accused of attempted rape. Ticket...

The Oracles: My Filipino Grandparents in America
Pati Navalta Poblete

As a young girl growing up in California, Pati Navalta Poblete is dismayed to find her American way of life interrupted when her four grandparents arrive from the Philippines. Turning her adolescence upside down, they inspire her to name them...

Fast Cars and Frybread: 
Reports from the Rez
Gordon Johnson

These essays are about fiestas with frybread and beans, storytelling, dancing, snow cones, dogfights, and sometimes human fights. They are about sweat lodges and funerals and the dangers of "commod bod" (obesity caused by eating government surplus food). They are...

Archy Lee: A California Fugitive Slave Case
Rudolph M. Lapp;
Foreword by Shirley Ann Wilson Moore

Part courtroom drama, part adventure story, Rudolph M. Lapp's Archy Lee captures the essence of the celebrated 1858 trial of an alleged fugitive slave in California. When Archy Lee is arrested in Sacramento for refusing to return to Mississippi with...

Allensworth, the Freedom Colony: A California African American Township
Alice C. Royal with Mickey Ellinger and Scott Braley

In 1908, Colonel Allen Allensworth founded a small town in the dry alkaline soil of California's Central Valley. A high-ranking U.S. Army officer and chaplain who had escaped from slavery, he envisioned a utopian community where African Americans could thrive....