by Edan Lepucki
First published 2024
Ursa has an extraordinary ability to move through memory and revisit her past. She leaves her hometown for 1950s California, where her power attracts a group of women to a crumbling Victorian house in the woods near Santa Cruz. The sisterhood turns dark and threatening. Her son Ray and his pregnant girlfriend Cherry escape to Los Angeles to build new lives away from Ursa's toxic control. But the past follows them. Strange events force Cherry to abandon their newborn daughter, leaving Ray to raise Opal by himself. Now a teenager, Opal struggles with her mother's disappearance. She must dig into her family's buried history to understand the glittering power that has caused generations of pain. The story moves from Santa Cruz forests to 1980s Melrose Avenue to an isolated mansion near La Cienega Boulevard, exploring how memory can both wound and heal the ties between mothers and daughters.
Genres: literary-fiction, contemporary, magical-realism, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: California, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles, La Cienega Boulevard, Melrose Avenue
Period: 1950s, 1980s
416 pages · Paperback · Counterpoint
Content warnings: mental-illness