In a good crime series, the hero traverses the city so much in figuring out whatever crime they have been roped into that the writer remaps it, makes the place their own,” writes John Freeman in an essay on celebrated Los Angeles author Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress in California Rewritten. “Mosley does this and some in his [Easy] Rawlins books, but he goes much further.”
Mosley is the author of more than 60 books total. Private investigator Easy Rawlins appears in 17 mysteries by Mosley; the most recent book about Easy is the intricately plotted Gray Dawn, which received a rave review from Kirkus. In Gray Dawn, it’s 1970s Los Angeles, and the PI is in midlife. He’s asked by a “brutish” man, Santangelo Burris, to find his missing “auntie,” Lutisha James, with not much to go on—Santangelo’s grandmother wants to talk to Lutisha. In the course of investigating the disappearance of Lutisha, who is involved with gambling, Easy discovers an unexpected connection to his own past.
Mosley includes an author’s note with the novel, writing about the first story in which Easy appears and explaining, “This was the birth of Easy Rawlins, a character I’ve never felt the urge to introduce because he had always been the teller of his own tales. But this time, with Gray Dawn, something has changed. Easy’s experiences and his world have slipped far enough into the past that, it is possible, many will not understand the reason for his fictional existence. Easy, and his friends, exist to testify about a volatile time in Black, and therefore American, history.”
It’s, in part, this danger—that of cultural amnesia—that books like the Easy Rawlins mysteries and other canonical works guard against. While the “canon” is sometimes perceived as a purely academic or even elitist concern, at their best, literary canons, especially those attuned to regions and eras, can be an important part of keeping readers alive to others’ realities as they’ve existed and evolved through time. What Freeman calls for in California Rewritten is a California canon that breathes, that captures what it’s been like, what it is like, to live, to be alive, in the Golden State. And Mosley’s Easy Rawlins books, including Gray Dawn, which takes us around Los Angeles, bring to life not only a recurring cast of characters but also the city itself—the author makes his hometown more and more his own with every book.
We’re delighted to welcome Mosley as the special guest host of the California Book Club for a conversation with Freeman (your usual CBC host) about California Rewritten on Thursday. Mosley first participated in the California Book Club in its early months—in December 2020—as a featured author talking with Freeman about Devil in a Blue Dress.
Hop on Zoom for Thursday night’s CBC event—it’s bound to be a smart, spirited discussion between two great writers about a beautifully thoughtful book that pays tribute to the California canon.
Join us on October 16 at 5 p.m. Pacific time, when Freeman will sit down with special guest host Mosley to discuss California Rewritten. Register for the Zoom conversation here.
TRUST AND CONNECTION
Read a feature by critic Heather Scott Partington on Ilana Masad’s novel Beings. —Alta
BUY TICKETS!
Join John Freeman, Rebecca Solnit, and Paul Yamazaki at Litquake as they talk about California Rewritten on Wednesday, October 22, at 7:30 p.m. at the Verdi Club in San Francisco. —Eventbrite
2025 “GENIUS” AWARD
Past CBC author Tommy Orange has been named a MacArthur Fellow. —Associated Press
RECOGNITION
Past CBC author Rabih Alameddine is a National Book Award finalist in fiction for The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother). Past CBC special guest Karen Russell is a finalist in the same category for The Antidote. —New York Times
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