California has been invaded by three imperial powers: Spain, Mexico, and the United States. "Deep California" examines in depth the lingering psychological traumas and motifs emanating from that long history of conquest. These unhealed events have not been left in the past: they recur symbolically again and again, growing in intensity as the overbuilt land and its distracted occupiers unconsciously but definitively demonstrate that environmental justice and social justice can no longer be thought of as separate.

Pacing crusaders and colonizers from county to county along El Camino Real,...