Summary of Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Book Preview: #1 The San Bernardino Valley is a strange place, not the coastal California of the subtropical twilights and the soft westerlies off the Pacific, but a harsher California haunted by the Mojave just beyond the mountains.#2 Banyan Street was the route Lucille Miller took home from the twenty-four-hour Mayfair Market on the night of October 7, 1964.

Her 1964 Volkswagen came to a sudden stop, and began to burn.

For an hour and fifteen minutes, Lucille Miller ran up and down Banyan calling for help, but no cars passed and no help came.#3 The murder of Gordon Miller's wife, Lucille, was a Southern California story.

She was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1930, the only child of Gordon and Lily Maxwell, both schoolteachers and Seventh-Day Adventist Church members.#4 The Millers' marriage was not immune to the typical tensions of love and money.

They had reached the traditional truce, the point at which many resign themselves to cutting their losses and hopes.

But the season of trouble was not to end that easily.