Lola, California - by Edie Meidav (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The year is 2008; the place, California. Vic Mahler, famous for having inspired cult followers in the seventies, serves time on death row, awaiting his execution in ten days. For years, his daughter, Lana, has been in hiding, but her friend Rose, a lawyer, is determined to bring the two together. Yet when Rose succeeds in tracking down Lana at a California health spa, the pair must negotiate land mines of memory in order to reconcile the past and face their futures. A story infused with pathos and wit, insight and lyricism, Lola, California "matches metaphoric wit with an American state that defies summary....A hypnotic and suspenseful tale, tightening toward an irresistible end" (Elizabeth Rosner, author of The Speed of Light).

Review Quotes

"[A] gorgeous, audacious novel . . .Meidav is an American original." --Anne Trubek, The Daily Beast

"A clock-ticking thriller and a maximal social novel." --San Francisco Weekly

"Meidav captures the self-indulgence of adolescent friendship and the tension underlying familial bonds, languidly teasing out the surprising secrets of the past." --The New Yorker

"Edie Meidav makes sentences perform like a snake charmer's snakes in this meditation on friendship, parenthood, and of course California." --Luc Sante, author of Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York

"Edie Meidav treats the West Coast's counterculture and the lives of young women with a steely regard, and does so in prose as faceted and illuminating as a flashing diamond. It's that artistry, and the wisdom of her novel, which make the story's shocking conclusion all the more profound." --Oscar Villalon

"A page-turner in the moment; a thought-provoker that lingers in the mind." --Meredith Maran, author of A Theory of Small Earthquakes

About the Author

Edie Meidav is the author of The Far Field: A Novel of Ceylon and Crawl Space (FSG, 2005). Winner of a Lannan Fellowship, a Howard Fellowship, the Kafka Prize for Fiction by an American Woman, and the Bard Fiction Prize, she teaches at Bard College.