Holy Land

A Suburban Memoir

By: D.J. Waldie

Narrated by: Rich Miller

Since its original publication in 1996, Holy Land has become an American classic. In "quick, translucent prose" (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times) that is at once lyrical and unsentimental, D. J. Waldie recounts growing up in Lakewood, California, a prototypical post-World War II suburb. Laid out in 316 sections as carefully measured as a grid of tract houses, Holy Land is by turns touching, eerie, funny, and encyclopedic in its handling of what was gained and lost when thousands of blue-collar families were thrown together in the suburbs of the 1950s. An intensely realized and wholly original memoir about the way in which a place can shape a life, Holy Land is ultimately about the resonance of choices - how wide a street should be, what to name a park - and the hopes that are realized in the habits of everyday life.

©1996, 2005 Donald J. Waldie (P)2021 Tantor

Unusual format, slow to get used to; but ultimately appreciated.

Painting pictures of my hometown ( b. 1952 ); some familiar; most anecdotes I was clueless about during my childhood and adolescent distractions.

Genuine and personal history.

I was surprised at the chapter brevity, but it is a method of storytelling that fit the subject just fine. All together the 300+ chapters tell the story of early Lakewood and the context in which it came into being.