Host Jordan Mattox sits down with novelist Shelley Blanton-Stroud for a wide-ranging conversation about Bakersfield, historical fiction, and the hidden corners of California’s past. They begin with stories of growing up in the Central Valley—the stereotypes outsiders project, the Bakersfield Sound, Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace, and family traditions rooted in Dust Bowl migration.
The conversation turns to Shelley’s work as a novelist. She explains the creative tension between history and fiction, the challenge of recreating the mental worlds of past characters, and how she used the erased record of the 1945 San Francisco “peace riots” as the foundation for her new novel An Unlikely Prospect.
The episode also looks ahead to Shelley’s next project on Earl Warren, Bakersfield’s most famous son, whose father’s unsolved murder left a lasting imprint on his career and California history.
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