Verwandte Artikel zu Perris, California: A Novel

Perris, California: A Novel - Hardcover

Stark, Rachel

 
9780593656204: Perris, California: A Novel
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0593656202 ISBN 13: 9780593656204
Verlag: Penguin Press, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

“A glorious debut...it will rouse your deepest well of empathy.” —Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of The Good Left Undone

“This novel will live alongside classics of young womanhood.” —Susan Straight, author of bestsellers Mecca and In the Country of Women

In this unforgettable debut novel, twenty-seven-year-old Tessa, pregnant with her third child and living in a trailer on her mother-in-law’s property, encounters the woman she used to love—leading Tessa to question the very foundations of the life she’s built

Abandoned first by her father and then her mother, as a girl Tessa is left to live with her abusive stepfather and stepbrother. She survives by finding reserves of strength in herself, and by the surprising, transformative love of another teenage girl, Mel, who sees through Tessa’s tough exterior to the vulnerable, scarred, loving woman inside. When she suddenly loses Mel, too, Tessa stumbles into a saving grace of a different kind with Henry and his mama, Angie, becoming a mother and finding herself in a familial existence that somehow carries her into adulthood—until the day she runs into Mel, who has just returned to Perris after years away.

Filled with violence, tragedy, tenderness, longing, and the unvarnished courage of women living in a mostly unseen America, Perris, California is the utterly gripping story of Tessa’s journey from trauma to healing, and it introduces us to one of the most indelible female characters since Bone Boatwright in Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina or Ruth Langmore in Ozark.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rachel Stark grew up in Perris, California. She received her bachelor’s degree in creative writing from University of California, Riverside, and her master’s degree in creative writing at University of California, Davis. She currently resides in southern Colorado where she writes, runs mountain trails, and teaches yoga.

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PROLOGUE

1992

Angie

It was sometime in the middle of the night when Angie woke to a sharp pain in her chest. She put a hand there. She was waiting to see if it would pass when she heard a tapping on her bedroom window. She moved her hand from her chest and shook Buck’s shoulder. The tapping got louder. “Buck,” Angie whispered. “Buck,
wake up.”
There was the sound of something snapping underfoot outside, and Buck was on his feet. He picked up the flashlight on his night- stand and took his rifle out from under the bed. He and Angie went to the window. He had the light and rifle in hand and ready when he gave the nod to Angie, signaling her to pull back the curtain.
Tessa, Henry’s girl, was standing there squinting into the light. The side of her face was blown out so bad that the skin was pulledtaut across the bridge of her nose and the eye on that side was shiny-wet and pinched shut.
“Jesus,” Angie breathed. She and Buck ran outside to her. The poor thing was leaning up against the house to keep from falling over. She didn’t have shoes on, and her feet were torn up and bleed- ing. She was bent and holding one arm in close with the other. Buck stayed froze to the earth a yard away from the girl while Angie walked to her. Tessa was taking in quick, shallow breaths. Her open eye was big and showing all its white. Angie had seen that same look once before in her neighbor’s colt when it was pinned down and straining against four grown men; its leg was broken in three places after a bad jump, and there wasn’t no coming back from that. Angie walked up to Tessa slow and steady like she’d done with the horse before she put a bullet between its eyes.
“Easy, baby,” she said. Tessa let a sharp exhale out her nose. “It’s alright now, honey. You’re alright.” She looked busted up even worse up close. Worse than any of her boys or Buck had ever been after any schoolyard scrap or bar fight. Angie didn’t let her face show the sick she was starting to feel. “Honey, would it be alright if I have Buck carry you inside so I can help you?”
Tessa made no move or change in expression. Angie slowly reached her hand out and touched the side of Tessa’s face that wasn’t broke. “No one’s gonna hurt you here. You’re safe now. I promise.”
Tessa gave a small nod, and Buck came over. When he lifted Tessa, she let out something between a groan and a gurgle. “Easy with her, Buck,” Angie said.
She had Buck lay her down on the sofa at an angle so the girl would be propped up enough for Angie to get a good look at her. “Where you hurting most, honey?” Angie said. Tessa didn’t speak.

Maybe with the side of her face like that, she couldn’t. “I’m gonna look you over a bit, okay? That way I can help.” Angie got down on her knees and closer to the girl. Tessa had her right arm tucked in like a bent wing. It was hanging separate and heavy from her shoulder joint, the way overcooked meat hangs off a bone. With the way she was breathing shallow and the way they had found her leaning outside, Angie guessed there might be a couple cracked ribs beneath the dislocated shoulder. She wasn’t gonna move her now to check. The girl was hurting bad enough already.
Angie continued looking her over, placing gentle hands on the girl’s body as she went. Her eyes stopped when they hit the pee blooming on the sofa cushion between Tessa’s legs. Tessa’s wide, flat stare finally broke when Angie looked up and met her eye after seeing that she’d wet her pants. Tessa’s lip turned out, and she started a noiseless cry. Angie got up off her knees quick to sweep her mother’s quilt off the family hope chest and wrap it around Tessa before Buck could see what the girl had started crying for. She gently hugged Tessa to her.
“You’re okay now,” she whispered near Tessa’s ear. She felt the girl shaking then. She spoke over her shoulder. “Buck, honey, go get us a big bag of ice and a dish towel, wet with cool water. Bring those pills for your back and something to wash them down with.” Buck nodded. “Be quick, honey, and don’t you let Henry come near that door, not yet. Understand?”
Angie let Henry in after she’d helped the girl into her softest sweat suit. She cleaned up the girl’s face as best she could. She and Henry would take Tessa to the emergency room as soon as the pills kicked in and the girl felt ready to be moved again. She left Henry in the room with Tessa and stood outside the door talking in hushed tones with Buck.

“I think you better go pay Wayne a visit and collect Tessa’s things. She’s going to be staying with us from now on.” Buck nod- ded. “She wants some leather purse from under her bed awful bad. Don’t leave there without it.”
Buck went to wake their two oldest boys, Gordy and Benny, to bring them along. When he came back downstairs, Angie gave him what little information she’d been able to pull from the girl. She kept secret the parts Tessa had made her swear to leave between just them.
“And, Buck, it may be the case we already have a dead body on our hands over there. You do what needs doing, but I think it best if we don’t make it two.”

 
Buck

Wayne’s place was a two-mile straight shot from their ranch as the crow flew, but with the way the dirt roads took them, it was usu- ally about a fifteen-minute drive. That night, Buck got him and his boys there in seven. Thinking about what Angie had told him made his foot heavy.
Buck pounded on the door until he could hear someone coming and then pounded some more.
“Wait a goddamn second,” Buck heard Wayne say from inside as he undid the dead bolt. Soon as Wayne opened the door, Buck gave him a solid blow to the stomach, and Wayne crumpled to the ground. After a ten-second count, Wayne sucked in a deep breath and rolled to his side in a fetal position. “What in the hell you do that for?” he said, coughing.
Buck had known Wayne’s sorry ass for most of his life. They were both born and raised in Perris. They’d gone to grade school together. Wayne had been a smart and weaselly little fuck back then too. He was a drunk now, and he got by in life by cheating or leeching off good people. Buck knew the only reason Wayne had let Tessa stick around after her mama split was for the government check he received on account of her being there. Buck hadn’t imag- ined things were great for Tessa living there with Wayne and his dipshit boy, but he didn’t think the son of a bitch had it in him to allow the girl to be beat halfway to death like that. Wayne’s son had done it this time around, Angie had said, but Wayne had let it happen, and the way Angie had heard it, Wayne had taken a liking to roughing Tessa up in the years since her mama left. Tessa had just never told no one about it. Wayne was smart enough not to get himself caught by taking it too far, the way his son had. Buck wished Tessa would have come to him before she had to get it so bad. He’d’ve put an end to things sooner.
“Where’s Tessa’s room?” Buck said.
“What the fuck you care?” Wayne pushed himself up to sit with his back against the entryway wall.
“You’re talking like a man who’s tired of having his teeth, Wayne.” Buck turned to Benny and Gordy behind him. “Pick him up,” he said. Benny and Gordy lifted Wayne’s short and solid body up from the...

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Verlag
Penguin Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593656202
ISBN 13 
9780593656204
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
368
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