The Ruins of California - Hardcover

Martha Sherrill is the author of The Buddha from Brooklyn, a work of nonfiction, and My Last Movie Star, a novel.

*Starred Review* Inez Garcia Ruin is a self-described "baton of a girl," passing from one divorced parent to the other--from her mother, Connie, a former flamenco dancer turned realtor in Southern California, to her glamorous father, Paul, something of a fixture in San Francisco society and scion of the old-money Ruin family. Set in California in the 1970s, this jaunty, beautifully written coming-of-age story is packed with larger-than-life Ruins--not only rakish father Paul but also half-brother Whitman, adventurous, resourceful, and perhaps doomed; redoubtable grandmother Marguerite, who teaches Inez how to ride, serve a proper tea, and understand that the way you do one thing is the way you do everything; and a mob of Kennedyesque cousins swarming around the family beach house in Laguna. And then there is Inez herself, moving between two worlds and belonging to neither, trying to grow up at a time and in a place so laid-back the point is not to try. Sherrill's re-creation of California in the '70s is impeccable, and her story of how a girl trapped in a theatrical family manages to transform herself from an observer into the star of her own life is absolutely irresistible. Michael Cart
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