David Ebershoff Pasadena

Annotation

This sweeping, richly imagined novel charts therapid transformation of Southern California from frontier to suburb during thefirst half of the twentieth century. At the story's center is Linda Stamp, afisher girl born in 1903 on a coastal farm in San Diego's North County, and thethree men who upend her life and vie for her affection: her pragmatic farmingbrother, Edmund; Captain Willis Poore, a Pasadena rancher with a heroicmilitary past; and Bruder, the mysterious young man Linda's father brings homefrom World War I. Through the darkly handsome Bruder, Linda glimpses love and aworld beyond her own. She follows him to the seemingly greener pastures ofPasadena, where he is the foreman of a flourishing orange ranch, the homesteadand inheritance of the charming bachelor Willis Poore.