Stretching from Oregon south to the Baja peninsula, the California coast has been the birthplace of extraordinary stories, some based on historic events, others created by immigrants or aboriginal people to explain the world around them. In four sections -- Adventurers, Great Places, Reapers and Sowers, and Wild Lives -- this book brings the region alive through historical and contemporary stories, poems, and memoirs, and the contributors represent nearly all of the ethnic groups that have made this region home.