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Run River

Run River is the debut novel by American author Joan Didion, published in 1963 by Ivan Obolensky, Inc.^[1] Set in the rural Sacramento Valley of California, the narrative centers on the unraveling marriage of Lily and Everett McClellan, great-grandchildren of 19th-century pioneers, as their relationship deteriorates through infidelity, emotional isolation, and a shocking act of murder that serves as both vengeance and a catalyst for reckoning with their family's legacy.^[2]^[3] The novel opens in the summer of 1959 with Lily discovering a gunshot near their family home on the Sacramento River, prompting a nonlinear exploration of the couple's past, including their childhood familiarity and the pressures of inherited expectations in a changing post-World War II California.^[4] Key events revolve around Everett's affair, Lily's own indiscretions, and the disappearance of a .38 revolver, all framed against the backdrop of a fading pioneer ethos where traditional values clash with modern disillusionment.^[2] Didion's precise, evocative prose highlights the characters' internal conflicts, drawing on her own Sacramento roots to portray a microcosm of American identity in transition.^[3] Thematically, Run River examines betrayal in personal relationships, the erosion of familial and regional myths, and the quiet violence underlying domestic life, establishing Didion's signature style of unflinching observation that would define her later nonfiction and novels.^[5] Written when Didion was 28, the book reflects her early fascination with the American West's contradictions, blending elements of domestic drama with broader social commentary on California's cultural evolution.^[3]

Background and Publication

Writing and Development

Joan Didion, born in Sacramento in 1934 to a family with deep roots in California's pioneer history, graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1956 and soon moved to New York City, where she began working as a promotional copywriter at Vogue magazine.^[6] Homesick for her native Sacramento Valley, Didion started writing her debut novel, Run River, shortly after her arrival in New York, composing scenes at night after her day job while grappling with the displacement of being a young Californian on the East Coast.^[7]^[8] This sense of longing, informed by family stories of pioneer settlers who arrived in the Sacramento region in the mid-1800s, profoundly shaped the novel's exploration of California's pastoral heritage.^[9] In her early twenties, Didion approached the writing process with intense discipline, retyping her sentences daily to refine rhythm and overcome creative blocks, often returning to the first page to rebuild momentum amid what she described as "blank terror."^[8] She developed the novel piecemeal over several years, beginning with isolated scenes before expanding into a full manuscript, marking her initial foray into fiction following earlier successes with essays, including her 1956 win in Vogue's Prix de Paris contest.^[8]^[6] The work drew directly from her upbringing in the Sacramento Valley, reflecting the pioneer ethos of her forebears through its setting and themes.^[9] Didion completed revisions to the manuscript while facing repeated rejections, with the novel turned down by twelve publishers before being accepted by Ivan Obolensky Inc. in 1963.^[8] This persistence culminated in Run River's publication that year, establishing Didion as a novelist at age 28 after her essay work had already gained her notice in literary circles.^[6] The novel's Sacramento Valley backdrop served as a personal homage to her family's historical ties to the region, blending autobiography with fiction in her early creative output.^[9]

Title and Inspirations

The title of Joan Didion's debut novel evolved through several iterations during its composition in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Initially, Didion used Harvest Home as a working title for the first half of the manuscript, a phrase she later noted was dismissed by others as uncommercial—indeed, it became the title of Thomas Tryon's 1973 novel. She then shifted to In the Night Season, drawn from a line in the Book of Job, but her U.S. publisher, Ivan Obolensky, rejected it outright. The final U.S. edition, published in 1963, appeared as Run River without punctuation, a choice Didion accepted but did not prefer. For the 1964 UK edition by Jonathan Cape, a comma was inserted to yield Run, River, a stylistic alteration Didion explicitly disliked, describing it as neither her intention nor an improvement.^[10] These title changes reflect the novel's thematic preoccupations with cycles of loss and continuity, rooted in Didion's personal history as a fifth-generation Californian from pioneer stock. The story draws directly from her family's lore of 19th-century settlers who traversed the Sierra Nevada, capturing the fading legacy of those early ranching dynasties amid the Sacramento Valley's transformation from agrarian isolation to postwar sprawl. Didion conceived the book while working at Vogue in New York, driven by acute homesickness that amplified her nostalgic recall of the region's harsh, river-dominated landscape—a geography she knew intimately from her Sacramento upbringing.^[7]^[10]^[11] Central to the novel's imagery is the Sacramento River itself, which Didion employs as a metaphor for inexorable flow and erosion, mirroring the inevitable dissolution of pioneer ideals and familial bonds. This symbolism echoes the biblical verse from Ecclesiastes 1:7—"All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full"—evoking endless, unfulfilled cycles that underscore the ranching families' decline. Didion traced such motifs to her childhood observations along the nearby American River, where the water's relentless movement evoked both the promise and peril of California's manifest destiny, a theme she infused with the quiet fatalism of her native terrain.^[12]^[13]^[14]

Plot Summary

Narrative Structure

The narrative structure of Run, River employs a non-chronological approach, opening in medias res in August 1959 with Lily McClellan hearing a gunshot outside her home along the Sacramento River, which signals the murder of her lover Ryder Channing by her husband Everett.^[2] The story then flashes back to 1938, depicting Lily's childhood in the Sacramento Valley, and progresses through key periods such as the couple's elopement in 1942, building toward the 1959 climax without adhering to strict linear progression.^[4] This fragmented timeline spans over two decades, interspersing present-day events with historical reflections to gradually unfold the characters' entangled lives.^[13] The novel is framed by the 1959 murder scene, which bookends the narrative and uses Lily's third-person perspective to interweave past and present, creating a sense of inescapable convergence.^[15] Chapters alternate between viewpoints centered on Lily and Everett, providing intimate access to their thoughts while maintaining an omniscient distance that highlights familial tensions rooted in their pioneer heritage.^[16] This dual perspective structure builds suspense by revealing backstory incrementally, delaying full context for the opening violence until the conclusion.^[13] The overall design mirrors the meandering flow of the Sacramento River, with time jumps underscoring a sense of inevitability in the characters' fates, much like the river's unpredictable course through the valley.^[13] The first edition totals 264 pages, allowing space for this layered temporal exploration.^[17] A key technique involves interior monologues and fragmented memories, which convey the protagonists' emotional detachment and psychological fragmentation without overt exposition.^[15] These elements disrupt conventional storytelling to evoke a pervasive disconnection, aligning with the novel's focus on unraveling personal and historical ties.^[13]

Key Events

The novel begins in 1938, introducing Lily Knight's idyllic yet insular life on her family's ranch in the Sacramento Valley, where she first encounters Everett McClellan during a local social event.^[5] This early meeting sets the stage for their shared world of pioneer heritage and ranching traditions. The Sacramento River serves as a recurring backdrop for several pivotal scenes throughout the story.^[3] By 1942, against the backdrop of World War II, Lily and Everett decide to elope secretly in Reno, Nevada, bypassing family expectations for a more formal union.^[5] Everett soon departs for military service, leaving Lily to navigate the uncertainties of wartime separation on the ranch.^[5] In the post-war years, Lily gives birth to their two children, Knight and Julie, as the couple settles into ranch life.^[5] However, tensions arise from Everett's often absentee management of the family property and Lily's deepening sense of isolation amid the demands of motherhood and rural existence.^[5] During the mid-1950s, Lily begins an affair with neighboring rancher Joe Templeton, which leads to an unplanned pregnancy and a subsequent abortion, exacerbating family strains particularly with Everett's sister, Martha.^[2] These events highlight the growing fractures within the household.^[5] The narrative escalates in 1958-1959, when Martha takes her own life following the end of her affair with Ryder Channing.^[5] Lily then enters into a relationship with the same man, culminating in a dramatic confrontation by the river that results in a murder and a suicide.^[5] In the aftermath, Lily contemplates the challenges of raising Knight and Julie alone, reflecting on the profound losses that have reshaped her family.^[5]

Characters

Protagonists

Lily McClellan, née Knight, is a shy and introspective housewife hailing from pioneer stock in California's Sacramento Valley, where her family's legacy is tied to the early settlers' vision of the region as a new Eden.^[15] Her character embodies emotional numbness and a profound sense of isolation within her marriage, leading her to seek escape through serial affairs that arise from unfulfilled expectations of domestic life and marital bliss.^[18]^[19] These infidelities, often with men she does not deeply care for, reflect her passivity and social ineptitude, as she accepts advances more out of others' desires than her own initiative.^[15] Despite these struggles, Lily demonstrates quiet resilience, particularly in her role as a single mother navigating the ranch life and family pressures, including brief influences from supporting figures like her sister-in-law Martha on their marital dynamics.^[19]^[20] Everett McClellan, a stoic rancher and descendant of Sacramento Valley settlers, carries the burden of his family's longstanding legacy, which emphasizes duty, honor, and adherence to traditional roles in maintaining the land.^[15] As a distant husband, his detachment is exacerbated by his service in World War II, during which he enlists and leaves the ranch, finding temporary escape from familial obligations but returning to a strained home life that heightens his possessive jealousy.^[20]^[21] Everett's actions throughout the narrative stem from his inability to adapt to personal and societal changes, clinging instead to fixed patterns of expectation in marriage and inheritance.^[20] His character highlights the tensions of pioneer masculinity, marked by emotional restraint and a failure to connect intimately with Lily amid the evolving postwar landscape.^[15] The impulsive youth of Lily and Everett is epitomized by their elopement at age 18, a hasty union driven by romantic ideals that quickly gives way to the realities of ranching life and family expectations.^[18] This early marriage sets the stage for their individual arcs, intertwining Lily's quest for emotional fulfillment with Everett's rigid adherence to legacy, ultimately underscoring their shared isolation in a changing California.^[20]^[2]

Supporting Figures

Martha McClellan, Everett's younger sister, embodies instability within the McClellan family, marked by her possessive attachment to familial bonds and resistance to change.^[4] Her failed affair and subsequent suicide serve as a pivotal catalyst for the novel's tragic momentum, underscoring the fragility of family ties in the face of personal disillusionment.^[22] Through her interactions with Everett and Lily, Martha highlights the possessive undercurrents of sibling loyalty, clinging to outdated ideals of pioneer honor that ultimately isolate her from the evolving social landscape.^[15] Ryder Channing enters as an outsider developer, representing the intrusion of modernity and new wealth into the entrenched ranching community.^[4] As Lily's lover, he contrasts sharply with the old ways of the McClellans and Knights, drawing her into a relationship that strains her marriage and exposes social fractures.^[22] His presence amplifies family tensions by linking romantic betrayal to broader economic shifts, positioning him as a symbol of encroaching change that disrupts traditional connections.^[15] Joe Templeton, a neighboring rancher, figures in Lily's early indiscretions as her first affair partner, involving a pregnancy and abortion that deepen her sense of rural isolation.^[15] His role underscores the limited social outlets in the valley's close-knit communities, where personal lapses ripple through family networks and reinforce Everett's and Lily's relational strains.^[22] The young children, Knight and Julie McClellan, serve as innocent observers to their parents' marital discord, their presence emphasizing the generational legacy of familial strife.^[4] Named after Lily's parents—Knight after her father, tying to the pioneer lineage through a namesake that evokes deceased family figures like her brother-in-law— they witness the erosion of parental unity, perpetuating cycles of emotional inheritance.^[15]

Themes and Analysis

Family Disintegration and Marriage

In Joan Didion's Run River, marriage emerges as a fundamentally flawed institution, strained by the rigid expectations of pioneer heritage that prioritize duty over emotional fulfillment. The central union between protagonists Lily Knight and Everett McClellan exemplifies this erosion, beginning as an seemingly inevitable bond forged in the Sacramento Valley's ranching tradition—"Everett knew without thinking that what he would do was live on the ranch with Lily Knight"—yet devolving into alienation marked by infidelity and profound emotional distance.^[23] Their relationship, premised on "wagon-train ethics" of obligation rather than affection, fosters unspoken resentments, as weeks pass without meaningful conversation, underscoring how pioneer ideals trap couples in performative roles devoid of genuine connection.^[23] Familial ties in the novel further illustrate this disintegration, with incestuous undertones in the bond between Everett and his sister Martha revealing the perverse distortions of inherited isolation. Martha's affair with Ryder Channing, driven by shared melancholic loyalty to their family's pioneer legacy, culminates in her suicide by drowning in the Sacramento River, symbolizing the ultimate failure to sustain generational continuity.^[23] This relational rupture extends to the couple's children, Knight and Julie, who inherit the family's dysfunction without resolution; after Everett's suicide, they depart, leaving Lily to confront a hollow maternal role that perpetuates the cycle of emotional abandonment.^[22] Infidelity serves as a poignant symptom of the profound isolation afflicting these characters, particularly for Lily, whose extramarital encounters represent desperate bids for human connection amid marital ennui. During Everett's wartime absence, Lily's affair with Joe Templeton results in a pregnancy she terminates via abortion, an act funded by selling family stock and emblematic of suppressed trauma that haunts her sense of self.^[23] Later, her liaison with Ryder Channing escalates the crisis, prompting Everett to murder him and then take his own life, fracturing the family irrevocably.^[5] These betrayals highlight how isolation warps intimacy, transforming personal failings into collective ruin under the weight of unattainable pioneer virtues. The novel's exploration of loyalty underscores the unattainability of these "primal loyalties," as Lily reflects on her deep-seated tie to her father: "I’m not myself if my father’s dead," a sentiment rooted in blood and obligation yet incapable of preventing familial collapse.^[23] Suicide emerges as the ultimate rupture, not only in Martha's and Everett's deaths but as a rejection of the burdensome historical memory that defines their lineage, leaving Lily to navigate the remnants of a disintegrated household alone.^[23] Through these dynamics, Didion portrays marriage and family as institutions eroded by the very myths they seek to uphold, yielding only melancholy and unresolved loss.^[23]

The California Pioneer Myth

In Joan Didion's Run River, the idealized notion of California as an Edenic paradise for pioneer families is systematically critiqued through the lens of disillusionment, revealing a myth rooted in false promises of renewal and prosperity. The novel portrays the Sacramento Valley ranching life as crumbling under the weight of modernization, exemplified by the encroachment of dams and real estate developers like the character Ryder Channing, who represent the post-World War II economic shifts that commodify the land once sustained by agrarian traditions.^[13] This decline underscores a core theme of lost vitality, where the pioneer dream of self-sufficiency dissolves into dependency on external forces such as federal infrastructure projects.^[24] The McClellan and Knight families, depicted as second-generation descendants of 19th-century settlers, embody the failure to perpetuate the manifest destiny ethos that drove their forebears across the frontier. Their inherited legacy, marked by a sense of belatedness and exclusionary identity, collapses in the face of a closed frontier, leading to an inability to adapt to contemporary realities.^[13] The Sacramento River serves as a potent symbol of this erosion, transforming from a life-giving artery to a force of destruction and transience—evident in the drowning of Martha McClellan—evoking an undertone of inevitable flux akin to biblical notions of endless return without fulfillment.^[25] This symbolism highlights how the characters' ties to the land foster a melancholic attachment to a receding past.^[14] Didion neutrally examines nostalgia in the novel as a potentially harmful force that traps the characters in an illusory historical narrative, perpetuating a futile resistance to change and tainting their memories with unresolved guilt.^[13] The protagonists' unwavering faith in American exceptionalism—viewing California settlement as a redemptive mission—ultimately precipitates personal ruin, as it blinds them to ethical responsibilities toward the land and engenders moral decay amid electoral and familial failures.^[26] These mythic beliefs strain familial relationships, amplifying isolation and conflict within the McClellan and Knight households.^[25] Drawing from the actual history of the Sacramento Valley, Didion incorporates elements of post-World War II transformations, including contentious water rights battles that fueled agricultural booms but also accelerated the erosion of pioneer ranching legacies, such as those tied to early settler narratives like the Donner Party.^[13] This grounding in regional realities—marked by federally subsidized irrigation and urban expansion—lends authenticity to the novel's portrayal of a paradise myth yielding to inexorable historical pressures.^[24]

Literary Style

Narrative Techniques

In Joan Didion's Run River, the narrative employs a third-person limited perspective that alternates primarily between protagonists Lily and Everett McClellan, offering fragmented glimpses into their inner thoughts and fostering an intimate yet disjointed portrayal of their emotional lives.^[13] This technique limits the reader's access to each character's subjective experience, such as Lily's observations of Everett's detachment or his reflections on familial duty, which heighten the sense of isolation within their marriage.^[13] Occasional shifts to secondary figures like Martha further underscore the interconnected yet fractured family dynamics.^[15] Symbolism permeates the narrative, with the Sacramento River serving as a central motif for inexorable fate and the erosion of personal and cultural foundations. The river's recurring presence—tied to events like Martha's suicide and the constant threat of floods—mirrors the characters' descent into moral and emotional decay, evoking the fragility of the California pioneer legacy.^[13] Complementing this, motifs of heat and drought symbolize emotional barrenness and existential stagnation, as seen in descriptions of the immobilizing summer swelter that exacerbates interpersonal tensions and justifies desperate acts like Lily's abortion.^[13] These elements collectively amplify the novel's exploration of isolation by embedding abstract despair in the tangible landscape.^[15] Foreshadowing builds suspense through subtle early references to guns and water rights disputes, which anticipate the novel's climactic violence and themes of loss. For instance, the opening gunshot and ongoing conflicts over land and levees presage Everett's murder of Lily's lover, creating an undercurrent of impending doom.^[13] The non-linear structure enhances this dread, with temporal jumps that revisit past events—like Lily's Reno honeymoon or her sixteenth birthday—disrupting chronology to reveal how accumulated resentments culminate in tragedy.^[13] Didion further grounds these abstract emotions through the deliberate use of lists and sensory details, immersing readers in the Sacramento Valley's ranch life to contrast external normalcy with internal turmoil. Lists enumerate Lily's passive routines or family histories, emphasizing her disorientation, while vivid sensory depictions—such as the sounds of ripening pears, hop harvests, or distant kiln fires—evoke the ranch's rhythms and reinforce the characters' entrapment in a decaying environment.^[13] This technique, drawn from Didion's precise evocation of place, anchors the narrative's psychological depth in concrete, palpable reality.^[15]

Prose and Tone

Joan Didion's prose in Run River (1963) is characterized by its conciseness and journalistic precision, featuring short sentences and minimal adjectives that eschew melodrama even amid tragic events.^[27] This style emerged from her time at Vogue magazine (1956–1963), where she honed a lean, economical approach to writing captions and promotional copy, emphasizing clarity and restraint under editor Allene Talmey's influence.^[27] For instance, sentences like "Lily heard the shot at seventeen minutes to one" deliver stark, factual observations that propel the narrative without embellishment, reflecting a reportorial economy suited to depicting the novel's unraveling family dynamics.^[13] The tone is notably detached, with the narrator adopting a clinical observational stance that mirrors the characters' emotional numbness and sense of disconnection.^[13] This detachment infuses irony into idyllic descriptions of California's landscape, contrasting its pastoral beauty with underlying decay and loss, as seen in sparse depictions of heat and river flow that underscore futility.^[13] Didion's melancholy permeates this voice, evoking a pervasive longing for a vanished pioneer era through understated phrasing like "It’s too hot" or "Everything changes, princess," which reveal subtext without overt sentiment.^[13] Dialogue remains sparse and elliptical, prioritizing implication over exposition to heighten the emotional voids.^[28] As Didion's debut novel, Run River demonstrates an emerging mastery of these elements, a restrained elegance later refined in her nonfiction essays such as those in Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968), where the observational detachment gains even sharper cultural critique.^[29]

Reception and Legacy

Initial Reviews

Run River was published on June 15, 1963, by Ivan Obolensky Inc. and received mixed initial reviews, with critics divided on its stylistic maturity and thematic depth.^[30] The novel had been rejected by 12 publishers prior to acceptance, a fact Didion attributed to perceived shortcomings in her early manuscript during a 2000 C-SPAN interview.^[31] Despite these hurdles, the book sold modestly but marked Didion's entry into fiction following her essay work at Vogue, establishing her as a promising novelist.^[30] Praise centered on Didion's assured prose and evocative portrayal of California ranch life. Similarly, a Times Literary Supplement review by Zulfikar Ghose commended the novel's confident style and atmospheric rendering of Sacramento Valley settings, noting its assured handling of emotional undercurrents. Early attention also briefly touched on its examination of family disintegration and the fading California pioneer myth.^[20] Criticisms highlighted perceived derivativeness and nostalgic excess. Kirkus Reviews portrayed the narrative as a competent but somewhat detached account of marital strife and loss, likening its tone to a "somnolently southern" malaise amid bourbon-soaked family dynamics and levee encounters, without overt enthusiasm.^[19] Overall reception was tepid and limited, with few major outlets engaging deeply at the time.^[32] The working title was In the Night Season, which Obolensky didn't like.^[10]

Retrospective Assessments

In her 2003 memoir Where I Was From, Joan Didion reflected critically on Run River, describing the novel's nostalgic portrayal of California's pioneer heritage as a "pernicious" mood that she had adopted while writing from a position of homesick exile in New York. She expressed regret for idealizing the myths of old-stock families and the Sacramento Valley ranch life, viewing it as an uncritical romanticization that overlooked the region's harsher realities. This self-assessment marked a significant evolution in Didion's perspective, contrasting with the youthful enthusiasm that had infused her debut work. Over the decades from the 1970s to the 2020s, Run River has been reappraised as a prescient exploration of American decline, particularly in its depiction of eroding family structures and cultural traditions amid post-World War II changes. A 2021 New York Times guide to Didion's oeuvre highlighted the novel's nuanced portrayal of pioneer families in the Sacramento Valley, emphasizing its subtle foreshadowing of broader societal shifts.^[33] Following Didion's death on December 23, 2021, scholarly interest has intensified, with renewed focus on its themes in the context of her full body of work. Feminist interpretations have increasingly focused on protagonist Lily McClellan's agency, portraying her navigation of marriage and identity as a subtle critique of restrictive gender roles in mid-20th-century California society. Scholarly analyses, such as those examining women's mental health in Didion's early fiction, underscore Lily's internal conflicts as emblematic of broader struggles for autonomy within patriarchal norms. The novel's character development and introspective style stand in contrast to Didion's later works, such as Play It as It Lays (1970), which adopts a more fragmented, existential tone to depict urban alienation in contrast to Run River's rural introspection. Despite its literary significance, Run River has seen no major film or theatrical adaptations, though it remains a staple in university curricula on American literature and California studies, often taught alongside Didion's essays for its insights into regional identity. As the foundational text in Didion's body of work, it has enduringly shaped scholarly and cultural understandings of California's complex pioneer mythology and the fragility of its social fabric.

References

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Run River - Joan Didion
The iconic writer's electrifying first novel is a story of marriage, murder and betrayal that only she could tell with such nuance, sympathy, and suspense.
[2]
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Free delivery over $20 30-day returnsThe iconic writer's electrifying first novel is a story of marriage, murder and betrayal that only she could tell with such nuance, sympathy, and suspense.
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At the same time, she published articles in other magazines and wrote her first novel, Run River (1963). Although the novel sold poorly, it attracted favorable ...
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The working title was In the Night Season, which Obolensky didn't like. Actually, the working title during the first half was Harvest Home, which everybody ...
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Mar 9, 2015 · The novel opens in the blistering heat of the summer of 1959. Shortly after midnight, Lily McClellan hears a gunshot outside her home.
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Nov 23, 2014 · The novel goes back in time from 1938 and dissects Everett and Lily's marriage. It is set in Northern California, in a ranch on the Sacramento River.
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Nov 25, 2019 · After falling under the sway of “A Book of Common Prayer,” I turned to Didion's first two novels, “Run River” (1963) and “Play It as It Lays” ( ...
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Most of it centers on and around Lily whose rather fragile beauty harmonizes with her rather vague lostness; in spite of her reasonably satisfactory marriage to ...<|separator|>
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Run, River is set in the Sacramento Valley, California. It tells the story of Everett McClellan's marriage to Lily Knight.
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Oct 19, 2003 · ... Run River” (1963). It is the story, significantly, of how growth and development in metro Sacramento were weakening the values and ...
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### Summary of Joan Didion Writing *Run River*