Girl From Hollywood

The California countryside outside Hollywood is Eden, if you're born to the right family. The Penningtons and Evanses live on Rancho Ganado where oaks breathe ancient secrets, natural pools gleam beneath summer sun, and the land gives bounty without asking. For these families, life is simple and complete. Then the serpent arrives. Hollywood's bootleggers, drug runners, and murderers follow the oil roads into this pastoral sanctuary, throwing everything into turmoil. What begins as whispers becomes a war for the soul of the valley, and no one, not even the innocent, will emerge unchanged. Burroughs trades his jungle adventures for something more unsettling: a story about how America's dream factory poisons the ground beneath it. Written in 1926, when Los Angeles was still fighting to define itself between orange groves and movie lots, this novel reads like a prophecy. For readers who want their pulp with a conscience.