True Tales of the Sacramento Delta

Readers interested in history, particularly those with connections to Northern California, will be delighted by this trade paperback volume by Philip Pezzaglia. True Tales of the Sacramento Delta is a fascinating, well-written book with many stories grouped into nine chapters. Many of the stories are interesting to even those not much into history, but especially for readers who live in the Rio Vista area of the Sacramento River Delta. The book has many historic black-and-white photo illustrations ranging from small to half-page size nicely complementing the stories. We can see historic houses, many local people’s portraits, a contemporary jewelry store interior, bars, ships, and automobiles to give us perspective. Pezzaglia made one major omission: not including a location map that should’ve been right after the cover for reference. Since he mentions many towns and communities, readers would’ve liked to have an orientation without consulting an atlas or the Web. We learn about many aspects of the region: a major boiler explosion on a paddle steam ship, murders, robberies, safe cracking at the post office, an assassination attempt, bootlegging, tar-and-feathering, court trials, and so on. We even learn about major movies filmed near Rio Vista and Jack London’s visit to the area.