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by Ivy Pochoda
From the acclaimed author of Visitation Street, a visionary and masterful portrait of contemporary Los Angeles.
It's a familiar sight in Los Angeles, traveling on the 110 during peak morning rush hour: an endless sea of commuters, with no respite for miles. But this traffic jam is different - a runner is dodging and weaving between the cars at an astonishing clip. He's moving so fast he's almost a blur. But what's clearly evident is that he is completely naked. This seemingly mundane highway backup turns into a seminal moment for a handful of Angelenos-people whose lives are in desperate need of a change.
Out of this ordinary event, Ivy Pochoda spins a web that stretches all over the City of Angels, from Skid Row to the gentrified enclaves, from the desert to the ocean, all featuring characters in some sort of disarray. There's Ren, from Brooklyn and just out of juvie, who makes his way to LA to look for his mother on Skid Row who has been lost to him for years. There's Owen and James, 14-year old twins who live in a desert commune, where their father, Patrick, a self-proclaimed healer, holds a powerful, dangerous sway over his many disciples. There's Britt, a wayward soul in search of adventure, who ends up the center of Patrick's attention. There's Tony, a successful lawyer who hates his job and his marriage and is looking for meaning. And there's Blake, a violent drifter laying low in the desert, but who unwittingly gets caught up with James and Patrick and the whole sham healing game.
When one of the twins runs away after a disturbing incident on Patrick's commune, a series of events bring these characters, all so real and true, and imbued with endless amounts of empathy and wisdom, together. Whether running away from the past, or looking to reclaim their future, they all will do anything for a semblance of peace.
Ivy Pochoda, who the Boston Globe said has "a profound understanding of human resilience," has written a sweeping portrait of angst, violence, heartache, and yearning-a breathtaking novel of remarkable wisdom and empathy.
"Pochoda paints southern California with a vibrant brush, rendering an evocative landscape on which her desperate characters seek out redemption and rejuvenation." - Booklist
"Wonder Valley is destined to be a classic L.A. novel. From desert scrub to cold blue sea, it carries an eloquent yet hard-edge take on the contradictions of a place so difficult to define. It's impossible to put down." - Michael Connelly, author of The Wrong Side of Goodbye
"Ivy Pochoda's Wonder Valley offers us a vision of Southern California that is at once panoramic and intimate. This novel paints an unforgettable portrait of people who long, above all else, for community and connection." - Edan Lepucki, author of California
"Despite the initial confusion, Pochoda (Visitation Street) takes readers places they don't often see with authenticity and clarity. Her description of the daily lives of the urban homeless is particularly vivid and sympathetic. Each of the main characters does achieve some sort of peace or resolution by the dark and often violent book's end" - Library Journal
"Pochada has written a novel alive with empathy for the dispossessed and detailed descriptions of the California landscape, with a little of the film Crash thrown in. But as sympathetic as the characters are, their stories fail to come together as a dramatic whole." - Publishers Weekly
This information about Wonder Valley was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Justin Nowell
Ivy Pochoda is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Visitation Street published by Ecco / Dennis Lehane Books. Visitation Street was chosen as an Amazon Best Book of the Month, Amazon Best Book of 2013, and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Huffington Post, Self, and House & Garden. Her first novel The Art of Disappearing, was published by St. Martin's Press in 2009. She has a BA from Harvard College in Classical Greek and an MFA from Bennington College in fiction.
Ivy grew up in Brooklyn, NY and currently lives in downtown Los Angeles with her husband Justin Nowell.
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