What do you think?
Rate this book
Welcome to Wonder Valley: Ruin and Redemption in an American Galapagos
You might have passed through there, maybe. Out for a drive with time on your hands you might have noticed the abandoned homestead shacks crumbling along a grid of dirt tracks scraped into this corner of the Mojave Desert. Wonder Valley. It’s a place peopled by a menagerie of misfits and miscreants, artists and retirees, methheads and the otherwise marginalized. They live in the derelict cabins, fixing them up, some, or just making do in others. Author William Hillyard came to Wonder Valley to investigate the death of an old woman who had succumbed, alone, to the dry desert heat. From his first encounter, however, Wonder Valley had a hold on him. He found it haunting and otherworldly, almost unbelievable in its strangeness. It was like a lost island, a desert Galapagos in a sea of sand. In its isolation a people had evolved, a breed apart from mainstream society, many of them living on this edge, the edge of an abyss, an abyss Hillyard felt he needed to peer down into. Hillyard appointed himself Wonder Valley’s Darwin. He spent years in Wonder Valley immersed in and documenting the resilience and humanity of these people in the face of mental illness, alcoholism, poverty, and neglect, until the line between his reporting on and becoming one of them blurred. In the vein of Nomadland and Hillbilly Elegy as well as the work of Michael Perry and writers like William Vollman, Ted Conover, and William Finnegan, it explores a darker side of the American dream, a side so pervasive, yet so largely unacknowledged by major media. Interwoven with the memoir of Hillyard’s own fall and recovery from financial and personal crises, the book looks at life in a place where the safety net barely exists and falling through the cracks is too often fatal.
293 pages, Paperback
Published November 9, 2019
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 8, 2020
Wonder Valley is a fascinating first-hand account of life in Wonder Valley, a desert many might consider a waste-land, which an eclectic mix of people have decided to make home. Hilliard gives us a personal glimpse into many of these lives and the lifestyle, one he came to respect and in some ways embrace. A great read.
April 26, 2026
As my husband and I drove from Death Valley to 29Palms to spend a few days exploring Joshua Tree National Park, we entered Wonder Valley, passing the eponymous sign and a junked up, fenced in compound that included a (dated - it’s 2026 my friends) **ump for President sign and a confederate flag. I could feel the tin-foil hat vibes as we passed wretched cabins, strange RV campsites, hovels that clearly were inhabited, but looked as though they probably didn’t have running water or electricity, with each habitation huddling inside some sort of enclosure fencing. “Are the fences for keeping things in or out?” my husband mused.
As we drove through the area, the burned out hulks of houses and RVs, the ancient school busses, and other old vehicles, slowly rusting into the desert, the ramshackle buildings were interspersed with proper homes, with solid walls, satellite dishes and well kept gardens, as well as a tidy little community center with a children’s playground. It was a disconcerting drive that left me wondering what in the heck was up with Wonder Valley.
Wiki explained that “Wonder Valley was originally settled in the 1930s via the Small Tract Act (STA) of 1938, a homesteading law that facilitated the leasing and public-to-private transfer of ownership of parcels of up to five acres to United States citizens willing to improve the land by developing a residence, business, or recreational structure. More recently, Wonder Valley has earned a reputation for being a fashionable destination for artists, a trend which is frequently attributed to Wonder Valley's association with nearby Joshua Tree National Park.” (Source: wiki)
When my husband and I were at dinner at Kitchen in the Desert (highly recommend), I wandered through the nearby General Store and saw a copy of William Hillyard’s “Welcome to Wonder Valley,” assuming I would get questions answered, I picked it up. I am always up for supporting local, both stores and authors.
The book was well worth the cover price, although it was not at all what I had expected; I had been thinking ethnography. What I got was memoir.
As the book well details, it would be easy to fall into slapstick, creating a host of hilarious misfit characters to populate this wild and misbegotten place. Instead, Hillyard humanizes the lost souls he befriends. We live in a vast, fast moving, unequal world. People for many different reasons, mental illness, abuse, wretched bad fortune, fall through the cracks. And where do those people go? We see them in the unhoused in our local area, we see them in and out of emergencies rooms, we see them on the streets, addicts, unable or unwilling to access sanctioned medication that may (or may not) help them live a more “normal” life.
The alcoholism, the mental illness, the deaths from suicide, murder, lack of access to health care, and the desert are all happening to real people, people who’s chances have run out, or maybe who were never given a real chance? However you view it, the chronicle of Wonder Valley is sobering, as it details significant pain, loneliness, desperation, isolation, none of which are the way humans are mean to live. The thread the author weaves makes it clear that it’s connections that salvage people. People who can connect with others can survive, depending on each other even in small ways is meaningful in such a harsh environment.
Wonder Valley is a catch basin for people falling through the cracks, and for most, their last landing place. People come, but rarely leave. The author himself is an exception, coming to Wonder Valley to escape failure, but in the end, making it with the help of his wife, a place of respite and friendship. I found the honesty in the writing engaging, and I did find myself rooting for Hillyard and his wife Ann. She’s a saint for sure, something the author mentions enough times for me to believe he really understands what a gem of a wife he has. In the end, it seems it is his relationship that allows him to continue to have a life in Wonder Valley, without being one to fall all the way through to the bottom. Welcome to Wonder Valley was published in 2019. I do (with quiet fervency) hope that their lives together have played out in a positive way. That the Wonder Valley home continues to be a place of respite and camaraderie.
As we drove through the area, the burned out hulks of houses and RVs, the ancient school busses, and other old vehicles, slowly rusting into the desert, the ramshackle buildings were interspersed with proper homes, with solid walls, satellite dishes and well kept gardens, as well as a tidy little community center with a children’s playground. It was a disconcerting drive that left me wondering what in the heck was up with Wonder Valley.
Wiki explained that “Wonder Valley was originally settled in the 1930s via the Small Tract Act (STA) of 1938, a homesteading law that facilitated the leasing and public-to-private transfer of ownership of parcels of up to five acres to United States citizens willing to improve the land by developing a residence, business, or recreational structure. More recently, Wonder Valley has earned a reputation for being a fashionable destination for artists, a trend which is frequently attributed to Wonder Valley's association with nearby Joshua Tree National Park.” (Source: wiki)
When my husband and I were at dinner at Kitchen in the Desert (highly recommend), I wandered through the nearby General Store and saw a copy of William Hillyard’s “Welcome to Wonder Valley,” assuming I would get questions answered, I picked it up. I am always up for supporting local, both stores and authors.
The book was well worth the cover price, although it was not at all what I had expected; I had been thinking ethnography. What I got was memoir.
As the book well details, it would be easy to fall into slapstick, creating a host of hilarious misfit characters to populate this wild and misbegotten place. Instead, Hillyard humanizes the lost souls he befriends. We live in a vast, fast moving, unequal world. People for many different reasons, mental illness, abuse, wretched bad fortune, fall through the cracks. And where do those people go? We see them in the unhoused in our local area, we see them in and out of emergencies rooms, we see them on the streets, addicts, unable or unwilling to access sanctioned medication that may (or may not) help them live a more “normal” life.
The alcoholism, the mental illness, the deaths from suicide, murder, lack of access to health care, and the desert are all happening to real people, people who’s chances have run out, or maybe who were never given a real chance? However you view it, the chronicle of Wonder Valley is sobering, as it details significant pain, loneliness, desperation, isolation, none of which are the way humans are mean to live. The thread the author weaves makes it clear that it’s connections that salvage people. People who can connect with others can survive, depending on each other even in small ways is meaningful in such a harsh environment.
Wonder Valley is a catch basin for people falling through the cracks, and for most, their last landing place. People come, but rarely leave. The author himself is an exception, coming to Wonder Valley to escape failure, but in the end, making it with the help of his wife, a place of respite and friendship. I found the honesty in the writing engaging, and I did find myself rooting for Hillyard and his wife Ann. She’s a saint for sure, something the author mentions enough times for me to believe he really understands what a gem of a wife he has. In the end, it seems it is his relationship that allows him to continue to have a life in Wonder Valley, without being one to fall all the way through to the bottom. Welcome to Wonder Valley was published in 2019. I do (with quiet fervency) hope that their lives together have played out in a positive way. That the Wonder Valley home continues to be a place of respite and camaraderie.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews