 Frontispiece to the 1913 first edition. | |
| Author | Jack London |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Publication date | 1913 |
The Valley of the Moon (1913) is a novel by American writer Jack London. The valley where it is set is located north of the San Francisco Bay Area in Sonoma County, California where Jack London was a resident; he built his ranch in Glen Ellen.
The novel The Valley of the Moon is a story of a working-class couple, Billy and Saxon Roberts, struggling laborers in Oakland at the Turn-of-the-Century, who leave city life behind and search Central and Northern California for suitable farmland to own. The book is notable for its scenes in which the proletarian heroes enjoy fellowship with the artists' colony in Carmel, and their settling in the Valley of the Moon.
The book begins with Billy as a Teamster and Saxon working in a laundry. Billy has also boxed professionally with some success, but decided there was no future in it. He was particularly upset by one bout in which he was fighting a friend and they had to continue fighting and making a good show of it after his friend injured a hand.
Billy and Saxon's early married life is disrupted by a major wave of strikes. Billy is involved in violent attacks on strikebreakers, and goes to jail. Saxon loses her baby in the backwash of the violence. She hears socialist arguments but does not definitively accept them, later meeting an old woman with an individualist view on relationships, describing how she successfully attached herself to a series of rich men. She also meets a lad called Jack who has built his own boat and seems to be based on Jack London himself as a teenager.
When Billy is released from jail, Saxon insists that they leave the city and try to find their own farm, though they discover that the government no longer gives out land freely. They pass through an area dominated by the Portuguese, who are described to have arrived very poor and prospered by using the land more intensively than earlier European settlers, whom they displaced. A few days of their journey are spent with a middle-class woman who grows flowers and vegetables and has a flourishing business selling high-quality products to the wealthy.
Moving on, they take a liking to an artists' colony but decide to continue looking for their own place. Billy begins dealing in horses as well as driving them. He returns to the boxing ring, using a new name so he will not be identified against an up-and-coming boxer, and wins the fight within seconds. He uses his reward of 300 dollars to buy a pair of horses and, after a victory in a rematch, resolves to fight no more.
They also encounter well-known writer and journalist 'Jack Hastings', generally considered to be a self-portrait of Jack London at the time of the book's conception. Hastings' wife—presumably modeled after London's second wife—is described as bearing some resemblance to Saxon. They discuss the wastefulness of the early American farmers, namely their habits of exhausting land and moving on, reflecting Jack London's views on sustainable agriculture.
Directed to their 'Valley of the Moon', Billy and Saxon settle and live there happily at the book's end. 'Sonoma Valley' is considered by a character to be a Native American name meaning 'Valley of the Moon', though this etymology is disputed.
Though not one of London's most popular books, The Valley of the Moon remains in print and can also be downloaded. It has been described as "road novel fifty years before Kerouac" and as reflecting London's loss of hope in socialism and growing interest in scientific farming, as well as a hymn of praise to his second wife Charmian. [1]
A film was made in 1914. [2] Billy was played by actor / director Jack Conway and Saxon by Myrtle Stedman.
The novel is referenced in Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano, by the protagonist Geoffrey Firmin (the Consul).
John Griffith Chaney, better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to become an international celebrity and earn a large fortune from writing. He was also an innovator in the genre that would later become known as science fiction.
Glen Ellen is a census-designated place (CDP) in Sonoma Valley, Sonoma County, California, United States. The population was 784 at the 2010 census, down from 992 at the 2000 census. Glen Ellen is the location of Jack London State Historic Park, Sonoma Valley Regional Park, and a former home of Hunter S. Thompson.
White Fang is a novel by American author Jack London (1876–1916) — and the name of the book's eponymous character, a wild wolfdog. First serialized in Outing magazine between May and October 1906, it was published in book form in October 1906. The story details White Fang's journey to domestication in Yukon Territory and the Northwest Territories during the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush. It is a companion novel to London's best-known work, The Call of the Wild (1903), which is about a kidnapped, domesticated dog embracing his wild ancestry to survive and thrive in the wild.
Sonoma Valley is a valley located in southeastern Sonoma County, California, in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. Known as the birthplace of the California wine industry, the valley is home to some of the earliest vineyards and wineries in the state, some of which survived the phylloxera epidemic of the 1870s and the impact of prohibition in the early 20th century. Today, the valley's wines are promoted by the U.S. federal government's Sonoma Valley and Carneros AVAs.
True History of the Kelly Gang is a novel by Australian writer Peter Carey, based loosely on the history of the Kelly Gang. It was first published in Brisbane by the University of Queensland Press in 2000. It won the 2001 Booker Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize in the same year. Despite its title, the book is fiction and a variation on the Ned Kelly story.
The Hamlet is a novel by the American author William Faulkner, published in 1940, about the fictional Snopes family of Mississippi. Originally a standalone novel, it was later followed by The Town (1957) and The Mansion (1959), forming the Snopes trilogy.
Colonel Albert Jennings Fountain was an American attorney who served in the Texas Senate and the New Mexico House of Representatives. Following a purge of corruption among cattle rustlers that Fountain investigated and prosecuted, he and his eight-year-old son Henry disappeared near White Sands, New Mexico Territory. Their bloodstained wagon and other evidence of an ambush were recovered, but the bodies were never found. Suspicion centered on two rival landowners, Oliver M. Lee and Albert Bacon Fall. Lee and two employees were tried for the murder of Henry Fountain, but acquitted after a defense by Fall. No charges were ever filed for the death of Albert Fountain.
Garry Douglas Kilworth is a British science fiction, fantasy and historical novelist, and a former Royal Air Force cryptographer.
Kenwood is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Sonoma County, California, located on Sonoma Highway between the cities of Santa Rosa and Sonoma. It lies east of Sonoma Creek in the upper part of Sonoma Valley, a region sometimes called the Valley of the Moon. Bennett Mountain lies west of the town, and Sugarloaf Ridge to the northeast. The population was 1,028 at the 2010 census.
Charmian London was an American writer and the second wife of Jack London.
Sonoma Mountain is a prominent landform within the Sonoma Mountains of southern Sonoma County, California. At an elevation of 2,463 ft (751 m), Sonoma Mountain offers expansive views of the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Sonoma Valley to the east. In fact, the viticultural area extends in isolated patches up the eastern slopes of Sonoma Mountain to almost 1,700 feet (520 m) in elevation.
Jack London State Historic Park, also known as Jack London Home and Ranch, is a California State Historic Park near Glen Ellen, California, United States, situated on the eastern slope of Sonoma Mountain. It includes the ruins of a house burned a few months before Jack London and family were to move in, a cottage in which they had lived, another house built later, and the graves of Jack London and his wife. The property is both a California Historical Landmark and a National Historic Landmark.
The Saxon Shore is a 1995 novel by Canadian writer Jack Whyte chronicling Caius Merlyn Britannicus's effort to return the baby Arthur to the colony of Camulod and the political events surrounding this. The book is a portrayal of the Arthurian Legend set against the backdrop of Post-Roman Britain's invasion by Germanic peoples. It is part of the A Dream of Eagles series, which attempts to explain the origins of the Arthurian legends against the backdrop of a historical setting. This is a deviation from other modern depictions of King Arthur such as Once and Future King and the Avalon series which rely much more on mystical and magical elements and less on the historical.
The Fort at River's Bend is a 1997 historical novel by Canadian novelist Jack Whyte. Written as part of a single book, The Sorcerer, it was split for publishing purposes. The book encompasses the beginning of Arthur's education at a long abandoned Roman fort, where he is taught most of the skills needed to rule, and fight for, the people of Britain. The novel is part of the Camulod Chronicles, a series of books which devise the context in which the Arthurian legend could have been placed had it been historically founded.
Rancho Los Guilicos was an 18,834-acre (76.22 km2) Mexican land grant in present-day Sonoma County, California given in 1837 by Governor Juan B. Alvarado to John (Juan) Wilson. The grant extended along Sonoma Creek, south of Santa Rosa from Santa Rosa Creek south to almost Glen Ellen, and encompassed present day Oakmont, Kenwood and Annadel State Park.
Western Cyclone is a 1943 American Producers Releasing Corporation Western film of the "Billy the Kid" series directed by Sam Newfield. The film is also known as Frontier Fighters.
What the Night Knows is a 2010 novel by bestselling author Dean Koontz. It reached No. 1 on the New York Times Bestseller List. Following the events of the novella "Darkness Under the Sun," it follows the life of John Calvino, a survivor of a violent attack on his family and current police officer. In the aftermath of Billy Lucas's brutal slaying of his own family, Calvino notices many similarities between Billy Lucas's family and his own, and Lucas knows more about Calvino than he possibly can. Spooked, remembering the attack of that left his family dead so many years ago at the hands of the late Alton Turner Blackwood, Calvino starts worrying that Blackwood, or his memory, might be back, and the family Calvino created may be in danger.
The Valley of the Moon is a 1914 silent film directed by Hobart Bosworth and starring Jack Conway and Myrtle Stedman. Produced by Bosworth/London, it was an adaptation of the 1913 novel The Valley of the Moon by Jack London and based upon a scenario by Hettie Gray Baker.
Wolf House was a 26-room mansion in Glen Ellen, California, built by novelist Jack London and his wife Charmian London. The house burned on August 22, 1913, shortly before the Londons were planning to move in. Stone ruins of the never-occupied home still stand, and are part of Jack London State Historic Park, which has been a National Historic Landmark since 1963.
Frontier Outlaws is a 1944 American Western film directed by Sam Newfield shot at the Corriganville Movie Ranch. It was the second film in Producers Releasing Corporation's Billy the Kid film series where Crabbe changed his name to "Billy Carson".
The Valley of the Moon public domain audiobook at LibriVox 
