This new compelling biography draws on interviews, letters, and Morgan’s diaries, including never-before-seen reflections on faith, art, and her life experiences. Morgan’s friendship with Hearst, her passion for California’s landscape, her struggles with familial dementia, and her devotion to architecture reveal her to have been a singularly brilliant and determined artist.

Available on Amazon and other fine booksellers.

Call 805-927-4611 to purchase the book directly from the Ranch. Hearst Ranch: Family, Land, and Legacy is the first book to document the history of the historic Hearst Ranch. It was written by Hearst Castle historian Victoria Kastner with a special foreword by Steve Hearst, great-grandson of William Randolph Hearst. Featuring three hundred never-before-seen images, Hearst Ranch: Family, Land, and Legacy explores the Hearst family’s private residences and the beautiful back-country landscape surrounding Hearst Castle. It reveals many of Julia Morgan’s ranch buildings, and delves into private letters and records to tell the stories of Hearst’s Hollywood guests and the colorful cowboys who worked the ranch, in his era and our own. The text is well-researched, engaging, and moving, and the story is a great American tale of the Hearst family’s connection with and dedication to its land.

Victoria Kastner is the Official Historian of Hearst Castle. She has written and lectured about San Simeon’s land and buildings for nearly thirty years and is also the author of Hearst’s Castle: The Biography of a Country House and Hearst’s San Simeon: The Gardens and Land. She is deeply versed in the relationship between William Randolph Hearst and his architect, Julia Morgan, as well as the relationship between William Randolph Hearst and his Ranch. She holds master’s degrees from the University of California at Santa Barbara and George Washington University in public history, with an emphasis on architectural history.