The Valley of the Moon

By Jack London

Jack London's “The Valley of the Moon” is a 1913 novel about a valley situated in the north of the San Francisco Bay Area in Sonoma County, California where Jack London himself lived on his ranch in Glen Ellen. It tells the story of Billy and Saxon Roberts, a working-class couple who decide to leave the big city in search of a very different life in the rural countryside. John Griffith London (1876 – 1916), commonly known as Jack London, was an American journalist, social activist, and novelist. He was an early pioneer of commercial magazine fiction, becoming one of the first globally-famous celebrity writers who were able to earn a large amount of money from their writing. London is famous for his contributions to early science fiction and also notably belonged to "The Crowd", a literary group an Francisco known for its radical members and ideas. Other notable works by this author include: “Martin Eden” (1909), “The Kempton-Wace Letters” (1903), and “The Call of the Wild” (1903). Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read & Co. Classics
• Release date: Jun 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9781528787079

Jack London

Jack London (1876-1916) was an American novelist and journalist. Born in San Francisco to Florence Wellman, a spiritualist, and William Chaney, an astrologer, London was raised by his mother and her husband, John London, in Oakland. An intelligent boy, Jack went on to study at the University of California, Berkeley before leaving school to join the Klondike Gold Rush. His experiences in the Klondike—hard labor, life in a hostile environment, and bouts of scurvy—both shaped his sociopolitical outlook and served as powerful material for such works as “To Build a Fire” (1902), The Call of the Wild (1903), and White Fang (1906). When he returned to Oakland, London embarked on a career as a professional writer, finding success with novels and short fiction. In 1904, London worked as a war correspondent covering the Russo-Japanese War and was arrested several times by Japanese authorities. Upon returning to California, he joined the famous Bohemian Club, befriending such members as Ambrose Bierce and John Muir. London married Charmian Kittredge in 1905, the same year he purchased the thousand-acre Beauty Ranch in Sonoma County, California. London, who suffered from numerous illnesses throughout his life, died on his ranch at the age of 40. A lifelong advocate for socialism and animal rights, London is recognized as a pioneer of science fiction and an important figure in twentieth century American literature.

Reviews for The Valley of the Moon

[kikiunhinged · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I can't believe I tortured myself through 500 and some odd pages! Boring and sappy. How I hate wasting this much investment in a story thinking surely it'll get better but it just gets worse. I stuck with it because the time period's union strife might've been educational but it wasn't other than some realism regarding the brutality, and I thought it'd be fun to read about the SF Bay area back then, but even that lacked in depth. Nothing but a cheesy, too drawn out story about two naive married people. It was a bit more interesting while they lived in Oakland but once they began to travel it just got too cheesy. The main characters lacked depth and acted, thought, and spoke like children. Finally, enough was enough. Just cannot do yet another 200 pages of this drivel. I'll give it a 2 just for some historical merit.

[bjace_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

"Oakland is just a place to start."Jack London, an Oakland, Calif. native, lived an epic American life in a short 40 years. He wrote an enormous number of novels, the most familiar of which are his adventure novels. While Valley of the moon isn't exactly autobiographical, it's a tribute to his second wife and the kind of life they tried (but didn't succeed) to build. Billy Rogers, a young prizefighter, and Saxon, a laundry worker, meet and fall in love. Despite all their best efforts, they are unable to build a good life in the city so they strike out as wanderers through a golden California, trying to find the home of their dreams.In some ways, this is a shockingly bad novel. Billy is callow and incredibly jingoistic and portions of the early sections sound like they were written by Barbara Cartland. The depiction of working class life during labor disputes is well-drawn, however, and the novel picks up its pace when Saxon convinces Billy that they should try their fortunes elsewhere. Once they find their Valley of the Moon (in Sonoma), Billy out-capitalists Andrew Carnegie, which is also not terribly realistic, but the middle of the novel pays for a tedious beginning and a formula ending.

[madepercy-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Others have suggested this was the forerunner to Jack Kerouac's On the Road, but this is only evident in the third book. I was surprised by a dead-end thread character who reappears only briefly to show the changes in the prize-fighting protagonist as he becomes wiser. The usual Jack London class consciousness is evident but this time he seems to highlight the false consciousness of the proletariat not as a consequence of the system per se, but as the fault of an individual's lack of imagination. Although somewhat the epic, an interesting read that gripped me whenever I picked it up. And surprisingly, no classic London macabre ending to regret, although the climax is the weaker for it.