COMING MARCH 24, 2026
For those tied to the western landscape who wonder whether we might find redemption in the story of its water during a time of increasing climate extremes, a based-on-true-events tale of family farmers fighting to save the land they steward.
Inspired by true events, this Chinatown-meets–The Grapes of Wrath novel tells the story of California’s Sacramento Delta farmers facing off against agribusiness owners over the massive water tunnel(s) the state plans to build under hundreds of thousands of acres of prime Delta farmland.
Winter 2022-’23 inundated California with as much as three times the average rain and snowfall and pulled the state out of one of its biggest droughts in recorded history. But the truth is that the American West, from the Oregon border down to Mexico, is prone to drought—and in California, the biggest battle for water takes place in the Great Central Valley, where south-of-Delta agribusiness controls every stream feeding into the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers. The protagonists of More Than Any River are the family farmers fighting for the Delta, and the antagonist is the big agribusiness controlling its water—but ultimately, the Great Central Valley itself emerges as the central character in this gripping tale of divisive land politics and high stakes.
Praise for More Than Any River
The war for water has come to California’s Central Valley. When family farmers find themselves in a desperate battle against agribusiness moguls whose greed knows no bounds, the fight becomes about more than survival. In this gripping novel of loyalty, betrayal, and resilience, Victoria Tatum brings the land itself to vivid life as the most powerful character of all.
If you like reading about people who live in interesting but unfamiliar places, you should enjoy this novel, one of lives flowing onwards, ever-changing like flowing rivers, but linked together, with people who see the Delta as home. It is a good read and can serve as a way to learn about the challenges of farming in the Delta and the importance of fishes in the management of the water that flows through it.
In the true center of the Golden State you’ll find not silicon nor movie stars but North America’s largest freshwater swamp, the California Delta. In More Than Any River, Victoria Tatum conjures a story as beautiful as the Delta’s islands, and as dark as the water at the bottom of its sloughs. This is a novel about the profound love for place and community that compels people to fight against the plans of the powerful.
More Than Any River is set in a California literary tradition that links history to place, and to watersheds, where human beings work, sweat, dream and die. Victoria Tatum has woven a mosaic that matches the land. It is a must read for anyone who loves California, where gold and greed played a critical role in its founding. But surrounding that history was water, and More Than Any River reminds us of that throughout.
A tale set in the Delta, Tatum’s novel is also about the delta—the change, the difference—she movingly and tragically tracks in the lives and dreams of people she brings so memorably to life. As with any consequential novel that demands our attention, as this one does, this book highlights the cost of caring, and for that matter not caring, about the resources, natural and otherwise, that give value to our lives.
Victoria Tatum’s rich novel, More Than Any River starts off as a low, even, and humming narrative of personal stories and grows into a rich fabric of land, river, and delta, wedded to the folks who work it and give it meaning. Like the tributaries that feed the immense Central California Sacramento River Delta, from Mendota Canal to the Friant-Kern Canal and Millerton Lake, we’re all connected.
An important read for these times, when the world faces worsening flooding and drought at the very moment that reaching consensus has become harder than ever.
This is a story of people and place, revealing how water, history, and human lives are intertwined in ways that are rarely acknowledged but lived every day and carried across generations. Reminiscent of the geographic immersion of Master Filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi, More Than Any River allows us to slow down and consider what is often overlooked, the systems that shape our lives, and the moral choices that determine who benefits and who bears the costs.