California has long drawn dreamers seeking opportunity, or figuring that if life is going to suck, it might as well suck where the weather's nice. Essayist, screenwriter, and novelist Joan Didion no longer lives in the state, though she was born and raised in the Sacramento area, and belongs to a family whose California land holdings practically date back to the state's birth. She uses the past tense in the title of her new book Where I Was From to indicate her growing disconnection from the place that nurtured her. Where I Was From is cobbled together from Didion's previously published book reviews and reportage, linked by her discursive commentary on the true character of the California dream. Her take? The state has a history of instant gratification at the expense of long-range planning: routing water indiscriminately, selling out to the railroads, basing regional economies on temporary government grants, riding the hot-technology rollercoaster, and so on. Didion writes about turn-of-the-century California as though it were yesterday's news, bringing in anecdotes from her own family and citing the novels of Frank Norris and Jack London as corroboration. In the process, she draws a line through 150 years of new, moneyed residents who make sweeping changes to the state and then argue for tradition a few years later when the next wave of wealth moves in. Didion checks immigration patterns, notes the connection between the prison-building industry and "tough on crime" trends in politics, and recalls the 1990s Lakewood suburb "Spur Posse" high-school rape ring, with an emphasis on how its origins might be traceable to an over-reliance on the military-industrial complex. Not all of the associative leaps in Where I Was From make sense, and some of Didion's rehashed work has been shoddily shoehorned into the text, but by keeping the book's purpose vague, the author gives herself permission to leave California behind and focus on her personal life. Where I Was From closes with the death of Didion's mother and a startling metaphorical linkage between her family and her home state. Her critique of one folds into a critique of the other, as she demonstrates how it's possible to coldly leave the past behind.