Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

FREE delivery Tuesday, February 14 if you spend $25 on items shipped by Amazon

Or fastest delivery Wednesday, February 8. Order within 20 hrs 58 mins

In Stock.

[{"displayPrice":"$18.00","priceAmount":18.00,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"18","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"00","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"I4t7ELU36jfsbksa8tJleGM4Y3Gs5kL%2FhTiXnR44H1NhBIC0pwwDEHDi%2FO5dPuQcDzPPjffuXGbByLfsbM2JFsRVVxqlEjvvtUOfEwZfW1aJEJ2ozsVTuI2ByUjXiiZKp8cU4omPiHP94cE7iogwBw%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW"},{"displayPrice":"$17.09","priceAmount":17.09,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"17","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"09","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"XhjyiSor%2BHTSqkSQ0V%2FDHe%2BJf1d2GxwBpTm7SOq0w3owUV0I3YGBptsdwnXtOawCOGk1b37jN6%2BGmafSj%2B6yYMeuTNLvS0skQKjDrjT%2Bb2sFw3h9SVYleJlwAEhj%2B1LXZUF%2B7TF%2F4sihA7llPNEdlVjc0RjivoJKKocBelE8xw49VXtqXDNY%2BA%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED"}]

$$18.00 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Secure transaction

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Details

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Return policy: Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime

FREE delivery Tuesday, February 14 if you spend $25 on items shipped by Amazon

Select delivery location

Used: Acceptable | Details

Sold by 2nd Life Aloha

Fulfilled by Amazon

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Have one to sell?

Sell on Amazon

Other Sellers on Amazon

Added

Not added

$13.60
+ $4.59 shipping

Sold by: Words-and-Wellness

Added

Not added

$14.44
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: allnewbooks

Added

Not added

$23.17
& FREE Shipping

Sold by: Book Depository US

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 2 images

Follow the Author

James Oliver Goldsborough

Blood and Oranges: The Story of Los Angeles: A Novel Paperback – May 4, 2021

by James O. Goldsborough (Author)

45 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$11.99

—

Paperback

"Please retry"

$18.00

$13.60

$13.09

Kindle
$11.99 Read with Our Free App
Paperback
$18.00

3 Used from $13.09 7 New from $13.60

Enhance your purchase

An action-packed historical novel whose charismatic characters take the reader from the roaring twenties to the fiery nineties in America's favorite left coast city. Los Angeles has never been better portrayed than by novelist James Oliver Goldsborough in Blood and Oranges.

Blood and Oranges: The Story of Los Angeles tells the story of how Los Angeles got that way— you know, THAT way, with Hollywood, mega-churches, impossible traffic, oil wells on the beaches, murders in the foothills, and riots in the suburbs. You have to go back a ways to understand, back to when the water came. Twin brothers Willie and Eddie Mull, a preacher and a high roller, arrive with the water and set out to make their marks. They rise with the city and reach the top.

The brothers have much to answer for, especially to their children. Maggie and Lizzie, Eddie’s daughters, don’t like Eddie’s mob ties, oil wells, or his gambling ship in Santa Monica Bay. Cal Mull, Willie’s son, watches his father rise to become the nation’s top evangelistic preacher, but like his idol, St. Augustine, Willie is weak in the flesh. Maggie, an aviator, wants women to fly in the war, but must get past Howard Hughes and find help in Washington. Lizzie works for the LA Times, wants women to be able to write for more than just the society pages in the paper, and does her best to get crime out of the D.A.’s department.

(And what happened to the trolleys that once covered 1,100 miles of city streets, half the distance to Chicago?)

The second generation of the family reacts to the first, but then must face the revolt of its own children.

In Blood and Oranges, we follow and fall in love with the City of Angels as it transforms itself over three generations, rolling with the waves that lap its Pacific shores, a place of plazas and orange groves becoming something unrecognizable to those who knew it even a half century earlier. It is the story of a family with its fingers in the seminal events of a city’s history—the rise and fall of institutions, neighborhoods, citizens, of the very land itself, constantly threatened by the people who call themselves its stewards.

Print length

432 pages
Language

English
Publisher

City Point Press
Publication date

May 4, 2021
Dimensions

6 x 1.1 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

1947951300
ISBN-13

978-1947951303
See all details

Kevin Starr
543
Paperback
69 offers from $6.35
Gary Krist
336
Paperback
60 offers from $3.74
John Buntin
394
Paperback
55 offers from $2.55
Rosecrans Baldwin
90
Paperback
46 offers from $7.19
Luis Alberto Urrea
1,393
Paperback
156 offers from $1.86
Mike Davis
250
Paperback
35 offers from $14.05

Editorial Reviews

Review

Author James Oliver Goldsborough has given us a fast-paced, engaging journey through the many twists and turns of Los Angeles as it exploded throughout the 20th century. Having spent his childhood there and attending UCLA, Goldsborough knows firsthand the metropolis and its many distinct neighborhoods.
“Blood and Oranges: The Story of Los Angeles,” is “sweet and sour, just like L.A.,” and is also a cautionary tale. In this historical fiction, the message is clear: Nature’s Paradise can be upended by careless human greed, by short-sighted investors, and by inept public institutions. Ultimately an optimist, Goldsborough has faith that civic-oriented leaders can correct wrong turns and create sustainable cities.
Through his fictional Mull family, Goldsborough traces the growth of Los Angeles from the arrival of water through aqueducts and the drilling of oil wells, the replacement of efficient trolleys with automobile culture, the investments in Hollywood and in aerospace, growth of Pentecostal revivalism and Evangelical radio, the ups and downs of the media industry, and eventually the emergence of a spirit of conservation and good governance.
Goldsborough harbors a certain nostalgia for mid-century Los Angeles. He writes: “The fifties were the golden age of Los Angeles, when a perfect balance was achieved between man, his resources and his ambitions: Human life was good. Governments were progressive, but not too… Dwight Eisenhower, a moderate Republican, was elected in two landslides, winning California and Los Angeles both times… It was a period of stability and equilibrium.”
But this stability and equilibrium were upset by excessively rapid growth, by a rapacious capitalist culture, and by demographic shifts that introduced racial tensions. The quality of public life was degraded by owners of newspapers more interested in excessive profits than in quality journalism, by public prosecutors in the pockets of criminals, and sometimes simply by bad, unscrupulous people with power over both public and private resources.
In Goldsborough’s world, the battle is never over, as passions pass from generation to generation. Betrayals and deceit can lead to murder (more than once in “Blood and Oranges”). Frustrated, distracted parents abandon unruly children they can’t handle. Children can inherit the best of their forebears – or the worst. Who can understand children? “It’s in their nature,” philosophizes one of the book’s wiser characters.
As one character wryly sums up the family intrigues: “Generations of love-hate, rejection, jealousy, insecurity, all the things psychiatrists make their living on.” In Goldsborough’s skillful hands, these recognizable passions make for great reading.
Readers, men and women, will appreciate Goldsborough’s ability to create recognizable, sympathetic female protagonists. At the center of the Mull family saga are two very distinct but equally talented and attractive sisters, one an early aviator and companion of the mysterious corporate captain Howard Hughes, the other a pioneering journalist and writer (modeled in part after the author?).
Through his female characters, Goldsborough traces the rise of women’s rights. In one of the book’s most dramatic chapters, a female religious leader is raped by her crazed, estranged husband. The old-time judge rules that a husband cannot, by definition, rape his wife. A similar real-world case led to the criminalization of spousal abuse in California and elsewhere. Other women in “Blood and Oranges” struggle to balance professional ambitions and family responsibilities.
A youthful character asks, “Why did Dad spend so much time pounding on the noisy black machine producing reams of paper that often ended up the wastebasket?” If this is Goldsborough pondering his own writing experience, we can be glad that, despite disappointments, he kept pounding away, to gift us this wonderful retelling of Southern Californian history, wrapped in tales of human love, death, defeats and victory. Histories in which we can see ourselves.

-- Richard Feinberg ― Coronado Eagle and Journal, August 6, 2021

About the Author

James O. Goldsborough, raised in Los Angeles, is an award-winning writer with a 40-year career in journalism. Goldsborough spent 15 years in Europe as a foreign correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, International Herald Tribune, Newsweek Magazine and the Toronto Star. He has written numerous articles for the New York Times Magazine, Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy. His first book, “Rebel Europe,” published by Macmillan, was hailed by the Los Angeles Times reviewer, “the most important book I have read in years.” He next published “The Misfortunes of Wealth,” a family memoir dealing with the disadvantages of inherited money. His two earlier well-received historical novels are "The Paris Herald" (2014) and "Waiting for Uncle John" (2018), both published by Prospecta Press.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ City Point Press (May 4, 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 432 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1947951300
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1947951303
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.1 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #319,506 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,021 in War & Military Action Fiction (Books)
- #18,209 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- #23,577 in Historical Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
45 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

James Oliver Goldsborough

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5

45 global ratings

5 star		55%
4 star		24%
3 star		15%
2 star		4%
1 star		3%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Jeff Kelleher

The epic novel of Los Angeles

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 25, 2021

Verified Purchase

James Goldsborough has done for Los Angeles what Edward Rutherford did for London, Paris, and New York: Create a wide-roaming fictional family and make it the vehicle for an epic chronicle of the city’s history.

The fictional family here is the Mulls, descendants of Spaniards and Scots, and possibly an amalgam of real Los Angeles pioneers. The story begins in 1913, with the death of the matriach Eva, owner of a 5000 acre ranch in the Salinas Valley.

Son Eddie had read of “an aqueduct to rival the Romans” being built to carry water from the Owens Valley to the semi-desert Los Angeles Basin. He senses opportunity. In a chilling passage that suggests what Eddie will be like, he is sluggish in getting treatment for his stricken mother. So he and his twin brother Willie inherit the ranch. Eddie cajoles the reluctant Willie to sell.

The brothers head south, cash in hand. Eddie, crafty and grasping, buys land in the San Fernando Valley and later expands into oil wells in Venice and offshore gambling. Willie, idealistic and ethereal, a former missionary, rents a shabby one-time grocery store on Wilshire Boulevard and sets up his evangelistic church. It will later expand to the grand Temple of the Angels. The sharp differences in temperament between the brothers will filter down through the generations, and provide a central theme of the book.

We follow those generations for 73 years, ending with the Central Library fire in 1986. In the course of the journey, the tumultuous story of the city is laid before us, in absorbing detail.

Where does it all happen? Here is a sampling of the venues: University High, Westlake, Marlborough, Harvard, and Black Foxe Schools; USC and UCLA; Ocean Park, Santa Monica, Venice, Brentwood, Echo Park, Bel Air, Playa del Rey, Catalina, Rosaritio Beach Hotel, Ballona Creek, the Big Red Trolley, Glendale, Pasadena, Burbank, the L.A. Times, Roscamare Road, Stone Canyon, Beverly Glen, Hancock Park, The Coliseum, Sunset Tower, Hall of Justice, Ambassador Hotel, Coconut Grove, Chasen’s, Lawry’s, Jack’s at the Beach, the Brown Derby.

Greed, ambition, idealism, and lust are played out on this grand stage, with the likes of Dohenys, Chandlers, and Howard Hughes making their appearances.

Oh, yes, and there are oranges—the luscious blood-orange variety. And real blood.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Michael P. Kinsman

Underneath the sunny skies, blood and oranges comingle

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 30, 2021

Verified Purchase

Goldsborough’s sweeping novel of 20th Century Los Angeles reminds us that hell-bent ambition, despicable land and power grabs, and lawless greed were not things that disappeared after the end of the Wild West or the deaths of the rapacious railroad scions. They continued to lurk underneath the fixation on the blue and sunny skies of Los Angeles through the most of the 20th Century and far longer than most people dreamed they would. His graceful writing illustrated times I lived through as a native Angeleno but hadn’t registered with me then. Yet, the sights and sounds he described rang true and revealed truths that lingered from generation to generation. Goldsborough's work skillfully leads us a through fictional world that actually resides very close to home.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 28, 2021

Verified Purchase

Many relatives moved there in the late 40's and we visited often. This story is fascinating. My uncle told me how the rail system was destroyed by auto interests and I never quite believed him! A must read for anyone who has an interest in how LA started and evolved.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Debbie

Great Read

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 2, 2022

Verified Purchase

Couldn’t put it down, great book

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Cal Gal

Great summer read

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 22, 2021

I bought this book to read at the beach and immediately got lost in the story of the Mull Family. There is so much history of LA woven into the novel which was an added bonus for me. Loved the map at the beginning of the book. I referred to it as the story evolved.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Erma Gardner

Great L.A. story

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 6, 2021

What a novel! It gives a very interesting insight into the history of the great city of Los Angeles. A history of which I never knew. The map at the beginning was a great help as I read through the many chapters. James Goldsborough certainly has a fantastic way with his words. They moved my emotions to the point of tears as I read through some unexpected occurring acts of violence. The wealthy fictional Mull family plays a great role in making this a must read novel.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Kindle Customer

A Gripping and Engaging Novel For Fans of California and History.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 19, 2021

I thought Blood and Oranges was a fantastic read! I love Southern California and I'm a big history nerd, so this book brought me right into the energy and lives of the people who made up Los Angeles during the 20th century. Even though the characters are invented, they felt real, and I was really swept up into their lives and the narrative in general. California will always be a goldmine of atmosphere, culture and history, and this novel does justice to the state and its rich history. All in all, a very satisfying novel that I think could actually make a great movie or television series.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Rose City Reader

fast-paced historical fiction

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 20, 2021

This historical novel tells the story of Los Angeles from the roaring twenties to the uproarious nineties. Three generations of Los Angeles history are packed into this fast-paced novel. Goldsborough brings the research skills of his nonfiction writing and the crisp style of his years in journalism to this tale of tale of urban glamour, corruption, crime, beauty, glitz, and grime. It is a story as sprawling and fascinating as Los Angeles itself.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Buy new: $18.00$18.00 FREE delivery: Tuesday, Feb 14 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon. Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com

Buy Used: $17.09

Other Sellers on Amazon

Follow the Author

Blood and Oranges: The Story of Los Angeles: A Novel Paperback – May 4, 2021

Enhance your purchase

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Editorial Reviews

Review

About the Author

Product details

Videos

About the author

James Oliver Goldsborough

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Buy new:

$18.00

FREE delivery: Tuesday, Feb 14 on orders over $25.00 shipped by Amazon.

Ships from: Amazon.com

Sold by: Amazon.com

Buy Used:

$17.09