In Search of the Dark Watchers: Landscapes and Lore of Big Sur

This odd picture book slyly introduces to the general public a little-known and even-less-seen community of mysterious, elusive "diminutive hominids" who, according to the authors, were known by both Native Americans and Spanish settlers to inhabit the "mountains, canyons, and wild coasts of the Big Sur." Steinbeck, a novelist and son of author John Steinbeck, describes these so-called Dark Watchers and their distinctive habits in a brief narrative variously anthropological, mythical, and tongue-in-cheek, including the author's own family folklore recounting the interaction between these invisible watchers and Steinbeck's "no-nonsense" grandmother Olive, who left them baskets of fruit, walnuts, and flowers and received feathers, seashells, and pine nuts in return. Steinbeck's stories of these little people inspired Brode, a painter living in California, to set off to Big Sur armed with colored pencils, searching for the Dark Watchers and making some sketches. Many of these drawings appear opposite Brode's impressionistic painted landscapes, which constitute most of the book, charmingly juxtaposing original sketches with finished paintings and beautifully evoking that distinctive region of the California coast. The stories and pictures promise strong regional appeal; unfortunately, Steinbeck's quaintly archaic language, more suggestive of the mists of Ireland than the fogs of California, undermines the atmosphere and the book's conceit. (BookLife)