"We strive for beauty and balance, the sensual over the sentimental." Her beauty was like the edge of a very sharp knife. The edge of her white kimono flapped open in the wind and I could see her breast, low and full.
I sat next to her, and we stared out at the city that hummed and glittered like a computer chip deep in some unknowable machine, holding its secret like a poker hand. I wished things were back the way they had been, that Barry was still here, that the wind would stop blowing. I was twelve years old and I was afraid for her. My mother was not herself in the time of the Santa Anas. "Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind." She held up her large hand and spread the fingers, let the desert dryness lick through. I climbed to the roof and easily spotted her blond hair like a white flame in the light of the three-quarter moon. I woke up at midnight to find her bed empty. We could not sleep in the hot dry nights, my mother and I. Only the oleanders thrived, their delicate poisonous blooms, their dagger green leaves. Fitch lives in her hometown of Los Angeles with her writer husband Andrew Nicholls.T HE S ANTA A NAS blew in hot from the desert, shriveling the last of the spring grass into whiskers of pale straw. A fourth novel completing Marinas story, Chimes of a Lost Cathedral, will be published by Little, Brown in summer 2019. (Little, Brown 2017) set during the years of the Russian Revolution. About The Author Janet Fitch is the author of the novels White Oleander (Little Brown, 1999), an Oprah Book club selection translated into 24 languages and made into a feature motion picture, Paint It Black (Little, Brown 2006), also widely translated and made into a feature film, and The Revolution of Marina M. Everywhere hailed as a novel of rare beauty and power, White Oleander tells the unforgettable story of Ingrid, a brilliant poet imprisoned for murder, and her daughter, Astrid, whose odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes-each its own universe, with its own laws, its own dangers, its own hard lessons to be learned-bes a redeeming and surprising journey of self-discovery. Book Synopsis The unforgettable story of a young womans odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes on her journey to redemption.
A ferocious, risk-loving novel.-Los Angeles Times Book Review.
When a woman murders a former lover and is imprisoned for life, her daughter must navigate a new reality-that of a series of foster homes, each its own universe, each with its own limits and dangers. About the Book A bestselling first novel about a young woman growing up the hard way, this is a powerful story of mothers and daughters, their ambiguous alliances, and the search for love and identity.
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