Local author Ken Kenyon has put his retirement to good use, combining his passion for local history with a deep love of writing.
The result is a new novel, set in the still relatively untamed San Luis Obispo County of the late 1800s.
A Tale of Old Cape Buchon chronicles the fictional story of Gabriel O’Rourke and his struggle to establish a nursery on California’s rugged Pecho Coast in the 1890s.
Situated in an unlikely location, a remote pocket of the San Luis Range, O’Rourke dutifully harvests specialty vegetables and hybrids in his makeshift greenhouses for delivery to markets across the county.
O’Rourke, a native of New Hampshire, comes by rail in 1885 to work in the orange groves of southern California. But opportunity eventually brings him to 40 remote acres on the Central Coast where O’Rourke must battle the elements and a bully/thief named Bo Barnes before his dream can be realized.
Along the way, O’Rourke encounters a Steinbeck-like cast of local characters, including farmers, artists, journalists, vaqueros, and maybe—just maybe—a future wife.
Two short nonfiction pieces by Kenyon, Origins and Cabin Along the Creek, are also included in the book.
Kenyon has been writing fiction and nonfiction for more than 50 years. He came to Cal Poly from Los Angeles in 1973 and earned a master’s degree in English with a concentration in British Literature.
The now-retired resident of Los Osos spent most of his career on the staff of the Robert F. Kennedy Library at Cal Poly. He also worked for 10 years as the staff librarian at the San Luis Obispo County Telegram-Tribune.
Kenyon is the author of two previous books, In Search of Alexander Hazard and Passage to Cerro Alto: A Tale of the California Central Coast. He also wrote multiple articles for Moebius, the former Cal Poly literary journal.
A Tale of Old Cape Buchon is available online and through local bookstores. Kenyon’s brother, Rabbani Kenyon, designed the book’s cover.