Holy Water Summary and Analysis

In one of her more personal pieces, the essay entitled 'Holy Water' is a study, nominally, of the water systems that keep the arid and parched landscape of California alive, and her own feelings towards it.

The third essay of the book and the second that discusses the State of California particularly, the writer Joan Didion reveals to the reader that she has an almost obsessive knowledge of the water systems of California and the Western Seaboard. She can reveal that the water that is within her taps comes from a particular reservoir that is held in check by a particular dam, that yesterday that very water probably sat in another reservoir further up the chain of systems, until such a time as it disappeared into the granite mountains, managed by the Operations Control Center of the California State...