"CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM" is an impressionistic journey of more than 50 years of extremely uneven and often strangely disconnected experiences in California. It stretches from the author's father's hardscrabble ranch in the remote mountains above Los Angeles, through ups and downs in an always-unpredictable California, ending, more or less, at a lonely and primitive ranch in the desert. The book is filled with unique characters, bizarre situations, and views of an always changing and, the author would charge, deteriorating California. From city streets to quiet rural areas,...

"WHEN EARL WAS KING NEPTUNE" is a keenly insightful account of the author's family, and of his personal experiences, observations and intersections with people, places and events in the last half of the 20th century in the Northeast portion of the United States. His story is told with great interpretative skill, wit and occasional humor and at times considerable cynicism. Part history, sociology and biography, the people, places and events, along with the author's sharp personal observations, that make up When "Earl Was King Neptune," will stay with the reader long after the book is finished...

"CASITA DREEMZ" is an impressionistic journey across the American West over 50 years. The author drifts like mist lifting from Green River Hole. Many rivers flow and many ranges rise from desert basins. The images he presents are like the tiny shadows that dart across the grasslands in the fading light of the day, and are gone .

Dayton Lummis has lived a unique American life--as museum director in a mountain ghost town 9,500 feet high, as caretaker of an abandoned ranch surrounded by endless desert, as an inveterate wanderer pulled through vast empty landscapes that most Americans have never heard of, and will never see. And always-always--on his journeys, he takes back roads. The characters Lummis has met and interacted with along the way form a vivid rogues gallery of oddballs, misfits and losers, and he knows how to tell their stories. As a highly opinionated (his friends say grumpy) observer himself, Lummis gives...

"STATES OF MIND" is a collection of the author's letters from Santa Fe, New Mexico, and St David's, Pennsylvania, to a very literate and old-fashioned gentleman in San Francisco. Written between 1993 and 2000, they are insightful, humorous and sometimes grouchy. They reflect two very diverse places in the American landscape-some would say no two places could be more different!-and the author deftly switches roles with changes in locale.

THE MILLENNIAL DEER is a collection of essays-social, cultural and political commentary, in the form of old-fashioned correspondence. Relevant to the changing conditions of the early years of the 21st Century, the author's views are presented with wit, great insight, and occasional political incorrectness and ill humor. They seek to connect a lost past with the mystique of a present that is blundering into uncharted and dangerous territory. As for the book's title, the author says, "Always at my back I hear-THE MILLENNIAL DEER"

CLIPPINGS FROM THE VINE consists of selections from the author's seven published books, and concludes with a series of contemporary personal essays, observations and opinions as we enter the Obama Era of hopefully positive change. Ranging from Coast to Coast, all over the Inter-mountain West, and covering a period of almost sixty years, the author deftly chronicles his experiences and the characters he has encountered (such as desert rat "Mr. James," featured on the cover). He does so with wit, insight and frequent discontent. These selections can be read as a cross section of a greatly...

SPACESHIPS AND LIQUOR is a collection of both amusing and deadly serious essays, vignettes and commentaries on life in contemporary America. The author includes a section he calls "Politically Incorrect," wherein he trods in opinionated territory, not always comfortably. You may not agree, but you will not be bored. Balancing this are more neutral and light-hearted views of the author's friends and his various involvements. Someone said to him recently, "Didn't I see you this summer in Moscow?" The author invites the reader to return with him from "an African adventure" and travel across...