The Journal of San Diego History
SAN DIEGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY QUARTERLY
Fall 2000, Volume 46, Number 4
Gregg Hennessey, Editor

Book Notes

Raymond G. Starr, Book Review Editor

Son of the South Come West: El Cajon’s First “Mayor.”

By James Harris Graves. El Cajon, Ca: Privately Printed, 1998. Drawings, map, bibliography, x + 129 Pages. Softcover.

Son of the South Come West is El Cajon journalist James H. Graves’ first volume of a proposed trilogy based on the life of his grandfather, James A Harris, who first came to El Cajon in 1911. This portion of the novel covers Harris’ story from his 1846 birth in Alabama through his move to El Cajon and the troubled origins of that town as an incorporated city. Although most of the novel is not about San Diego, it does illustrate the roots many turn-of-the-century arrivals to the area had, and hence gives an impressionistic sense of the kind of people who founded modern El Cajon. As an account of the roots and origins of El Cajon, it should be read in conjunction with Victor Geraci’s article, “El Cajon, California, 1900,” Journal of San Diego History 36 (Fall 1990): 221-33.