Road Trip Reads: 6 Books for a California Trip

I grew up between the San Gabriel Mountains, the Mojave Desert, and the ocean — where every horizon feels like a story. California’s history is as layered as its landscape. These seven books offer different ways to see this place: its land, its people, and the lives shaped by both.

1. We Are the Land — Damon B. Akins & William J. Bauer Jr.

   
   

The story of California began before statehood. This book reframes the land through Indigenous eyes — a living history told by Native scholars who remind us that the place is not backdrop but an identity.

From the book jacket: "Before there was such a thing as “California,” there were the People and the Land. Manifest Destiny, the Gold Rush, and settler colonial society drew maps, displaced Indigenous People, and reshaped the land, but they did not make California. Rather, the lives and legacies of the people native to the land shaped the creation of California."

Reading vibe: Prepare for a trip to California by understanding the past and present through the people who have always called it home.

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2. The Grapes of Wrath — John Steinbeck

   
   

A list of California is remiss without Steinbeck's Pulitzer-prize winning classic. This literary novel follows the beauty and brutality of the lives of those fleeing the Dust Bowl for the promised land in California.

From the book jacket: "Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity."

Reading vibe: A long drive into California to reflect on migration and the human spirit.

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3. Turtle Island — Gary Snyder

Snyder's Pulitzer-winning poems bridge the gap between people and nature. Rooted in the Sierra foothills, his writing merges Zen philosophy with ecological reverence.

From the book jacket: "These Pulitzer Prize-winning poems and essays by the author of No Nature range from the lucid, lyrical, and mystical to the political."

Reading vibe: Reflect on a day spent in California's wilderness with lyrical environmental consciousness.

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4. Cadillac Desert — Marc Reisner

An indispensable history of how the West — and especially California — reengineered water, wealth, and power. Reisner exposes the ambition and arrogance that turned deserts green, revealing the fragile systems beneath the illusion of abundance.

From the book jacket: "The story of the American West is the story of a relentless quest for a precious resource: water. It is a tale of rivers diverted and dammed, of political corruption and intrigue, of billion-dollar battles over water rights, of ecological and economic disaster."

Reading vibe: Perspective while moving through the collision of deserts and cities.

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5. The Last Season — Eric Blehm

Fall in love with the Sierra Nevadas through the eyes of ranger Randy Morgensen, and then trace his last footsteps to unfold the mystery of his death.

From the book jacket: "Eric Blehm's masterful work is a gripping dete

ctive story interwoven with the riveting biography of a complicated, original, and wholly fascinating man."

Reading vibe: Stay alert and engaged with this audiobook, or read it around the campfire in the shadows of the craggy California peaks.

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6. The Joy Luck Club — Amy Tan

Navigate the intersection of culture, place, and belonging. Warning: This moving novel on loss, love, and family is one of the few novels to make me cry.

From the book jacket: "In 1949, four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to play mah jong, remember the past, and gossip into the night. United in unspeakable loss and new hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club."

Reading vibe: Cruising through the cultural mosaic of California.

Support local indie bookshops by shopping this title here on bookshop.org. Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

What are your favorite California road trip books? Let me know in the comments!