Long frequented by pirates and haunted by pariahs, Baja California has become a favorite destination for whale watchers, hikers, and scuba divers. For Bruce Berger it has been more. In Almost an Island, he takes readers beyond the Baja of guidebooks and offers a wildly entertaining look at the real Baja California. Eight hundred miles long, Baja California is the remotest region of the Sonoran desert, a land of volcanic cliffs, glistening beaches, fantastical boojum trees, and some of the greatest primitive murals in the Western Hemisphere. In Almost an Island, Berger recounts tales from his three decades in this extraordinary place, enriching his account with the peninsula's history, its politics, and its probable future—rendering a striking panorama of this land so close to the United States, so famous, and so little known. Readers will meet a cast of characters as eccentric as the place itself: Brandy, who ranges the desert in a sand buggy while breathing from an oxygen tank; Katie, the chanteuse; nuns illegally raising pigs. They will encounter the tourist madness of a total eclipse, the story of the heir to an oasis, a musical Mata Hari, rare pronghorn antelope, and a pet tarantula. In prose as glittering as this desert engulfed by the sea, Almost an Island is a fascinating journey into the human heart of a spectacular land.
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Award-winning nonfiction writer and poet Bruce Berger is the author of ten books and is best known for his works exploring the intersection of nature and culture, usually in desert settings. Those works include the essay collection THE TELLING DISTANCE: Conversations with The American Desert (winner of the 1990 Western States Book Award for Creative Nonfiction and the 1991 Colorado Book Award); THERE WAS A RIVER, its title piece a narrative of what was probably the last trip on the Colorado River through Glen Canyon before its inundation by Lake Powell; and ALMOST AN ISLAND, which recounts three decades of exploration and friendships in Baja California. His desert writing has been widely anthologized. Mr. Berger's recent book is OASIS OF STONE, in collaboration with award-winning photographer Miguel Angel de la Cueva. "A knock-out look at Baja California Sur" The San Diego Union-Tribune. Winner of the 2006 ForeWord Silver Award for nature writing.
His work has appeared in hundreds of publications, including THE NEW YORK TIMES, BARRON'S and OUTSIDE. For three years he was a contributing editor at AMERICAN WAY.
In October of 2008 Mr. Berger was selected by The Department of State to represent the United States at an international literary conference held in northern India. After the conference he was invited to spend a week reading from his works in New Delhi and Mumbai.
Mr. Berger was born in Evanston, Illinois. He is a graduate of Yale University.
