In the promised land of the Sunbelt, people come by the thousands to escape the crush of Eastern cities and end up duplicating the very world they have fled. Can the land remain unchanged?

In Blue Desert, Charles Bowden presents a view of the Southwest that seeks to measure how rapid growth has taken its toll on the land. Writing with a reporter's objectivity and a desert rat's passion, Bowden takes us into the streets as well as the desert to depict not a fragile environment but the unavoidable reality of abuse, exploitation, and human cruelty. Blue Desert shows us the Sunbelt's darker side as it has developed in recent times—where “the land always makes promises of aching beauty and the people always fail the land”—and defies us to ignore it.

Blue Desert has no boundaries, no terrain, no topographical coordinates; it is a state of mind inescapable to one who sees change and knows that nothing can be done to stop it.

Charles Bowden was for three years a reporter for the Tucson Citizen, an afternoon daily newspaper. His stories covered everything from murder to copper strikes to interviews with Santa Claus and politicians. He became acquainted with the scientific floor of desert understanding and the political tumult of desert development while a researcher at the Office of Arid Lands Studies at the University of Arizona. He now lives in Tucson as a freelance writer, a pastime he describes as “practically a free ticket to the asylum.” Nevertheless, he is author of Killing the Hidden Waters, Street Signs Chicago: Neighborhood and Other Illusions of Big-City Life with Lewis Kreinberg, and Frog Mountain Blues (with photographs by Jack W. Dykinga).