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WONDER VALLEY

by Ivy Pochoda ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 7, 2017

Absorbing, finely detailed, nasty California noir.

The gritty lives of Southern California drifters are entwined first by circumstance, then by love and revenge.

It begins with a classic LA overture—a traffic jam on the freeway, its physical, metaphysical, and sociological aspects evoked by Pochoda ( Visitation Street , 2013, etc.) in shimmering detail. On this sunny morning in 2010 there’s something to break up the monotony—a man jogging stark naked against the flow of traffic. To decode this image, the rest of the book moves back and forth between 2006 and 2010, picking out the thread of each character like strands of a knot loosened and tightened. Britt is a college tennis player on the run from a terrible mistake. She stumbles upon a desert commune/organic chicken farm where a guru type named Patrick holds emotional and sexual sway over a band of tripped-out “interns,” the term itself a bit of comic relief under the circumstances. Patrick’s twin 15-year-old sons, Owen and James, have even more to rebel against than the average teenager; when Owen is humiliated by his father after a disgusting chicken slaughter, he takes off into the desert. There he runs into Sam and Blake, a violent, nasty pair of criminals whose flight from the law has been interrupted by the now-suppurating fracture of Sam’s ankle. These two end up back at the chicken ranch seeking healing from Patrick, but his talents only go so far. Also in the mix are a boy named Ren and his mother, Laila. Just released from juvie for a crime committed when he was 12, Ren crosses the country in search of his mother and finds her in failing health and miserable straits, living on the streets in LA. He has stolen a car to take her to the beach when he sees the naked jogger....

Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-06-265635-3

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017

LITERARY FICTION | SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE

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by Ivy Pochoda

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New York Times Bestseller

by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).

A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.

Pub Date: June 16, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine

Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020

GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SCIENCE FICTION

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BOOK TO SCREEN

IndieBound Bestseller

THE SILENT PATIENT

by Alex Michaelides ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 5, 2019

Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.

A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.

"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.

Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7

Publisher: Celadon Books

Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018

GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE | THRILLER | SUSPENSE | PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER

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‘Wonder Valley’ is an L.A. thriller that refuses to let readers look away

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“Wonder Valley,” the third novel from author Ivy Pochoda, begins with a classic Los Angeles tableau: a chase on the 101, complete with a police helicopter, camera-toting news crews and spectators recording the spectacle on their smartphones.

But this chase is different. For one thing, it’s not a car speeding down the freeway, it’s a young man on foot. It’s also not immediately clear who, if anyone, is in pursuit of him. And the man happens to be completely naked. The police are unable to catch him, but one observer surmises that his freedom is likely short-lived: “Because no one can vanish for good. Not in Los Angeles. Not with so many people watching.”

Things get even weirder, and much darker, from there. “Wonder Valley” follows several people on the edge, most paying in some way for poor decisions they’ve made, whose lives intersect in surprising and at times terrifying ways. It’s a dizzying, kaleidoscopic thriller that refuses to let readers look away from the dark side of Southern California.

Pochoda has a real gift for pacing, and she’s a remarkably psychologically astute writer.

Pochoda’s novel goes back and forth in time, alternating between 2006 and 2010, when the naked man sets out on his unusual marathon. The first character we’re introduced to is Tony, a dissatisfied attorney; he and his social-climbing wife “have a tenuous grip on the city’s glamour.” Tony is stuck in traffic on the 101 when he sees the naked man run by, and, for reasons he has trouble articulating, gets out of his car and chases after him.

Soon after, young Ren makes his appearance. He’s recently been released from juvenile detention in New York, where he was doing time for killing a man when he was 12. He’s come to Los Angeles to find his mother, Laila, who moved across the country while Ren was imprisoned. His time in custody has left him somewhat hard and somewhat shaken: “Kill someone at age twelve,” he reflects, and things “don’t really start haunting you until you understand what life is, how breakable people are.” Ren tracks down his mother on skid row, and he’s heartbroken by what she’s become.

Similarly haunted is Blake, on the run from the law with his partner in crime, Sam. After Sam breaks a bone, the pair are forced to hide out in Wonder Valley at an abandoned collection of cabins in the desert 30 miles east of Joshua Tree. It happens to be near a commune run by Patrick, a creepy hippie who lives there with his wife and twin boys. Patrick soon catches the eye of Britt, a former USC student trying to build “a new person on top of the one she’d been trying to escape.”

It’s difficult to discuss how the lives of the characters in “Wonder Valley” come together without giving away the revelations that make the novel nearly impossible to put down. That’s not to say the book is dependent on twists; while Pochoda takes her readers in unexpected directions, it’s the memorable characters and beautiful prose that make the novel so successful.

It’s a dizzying, kaleidoscopic thriller that refuses to let readers look away from the dark side of Southern California.

Particularly compelling is Blake, a hardened criminal who nonetheless nurses doubts about the direction his life has taken, and about his sociopathic partner, Sam. “Sam was fearless. Blake worked hard to be,” writes Pochoda. Blake, she reveals, had “been haunted by the people he and Sam had harmed — a sickening slideshow that kept him up at night and made his dreams bad when he managed to sleep.” It’s not uncommon for writers to imagine a criminal with hints of remorse, but Pochoda makes Blake a character all his own, far from perfect, but perhaps not irredeemable.

Pochoda’s portrayal of Patrick’s property, and the New Age-y “interns” who help slaughter the chickens that account for the group’s income, is also fascinating. When introduced to a Southern California quasi-commune with a charismatic leader, readers will probably flash back to Topanga Canyon in 1968. But Pochoda doesn’t go in this direction, and she even manages to mine some humor out of the group, courtesy of his teenage son, who’s skeptical of his father’s followers: “If he dragged a stick through the sand, someone asked him if he was drawing a mystical sign. If he sat on the deck after dark, an intern praised him for tapping into the lunar power source.”

Fairly or not, literary thrillers live or die by their endings, and the last pages of “Wonder Valley” are unexpected and pitch-perfect — there’s no unearned redemption, but also no needlessly dark nihilism. Pochoda has a real gift for pacing, and she’s a remarkably psychologically astute writer; it’s hard not to feel at least some kind of sympathy for all the characters, even the ones capable of monstrous acts of violence and selfishness. It’s a gorgeous portrayal of, as one character puts it, “the place to be when you don’t belong anywhere else, when you’ve done things that make the straight world an impossible place to live.”

Schaub is a writer who lives in Texas. He’s on Twitter at @michaelschaub .

“ Wonder Valley ”

Ivy Pochoda

Ecco: 336 pp., $26.99

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Review: Author delivers compassionate look at the displaced

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“Wonder Valley” (Ecco), by Ivy Pochoda

A naked man running through rush-hour traffic that’s backed up for miles jumpstarts “Wonder Valley,” author Ivy Pochoda’s enthralling look at people mired in a nomadic existence, anonymous to most and longing for a connection with another.

With its large cast of characters and unconventional storytelling, “Wonder Valley” works as the literary version of the Oscar-winning film “Crash.” Not every character is sympathetic, but the increasingly heightened drama that surrounds each character’s life never falters. These are people who are alone, even when surrounded by those to whom they should be closest. Adding to the feeling of anonymity, the novel is nearly two-thirds finished before a last name is evoked.

Married lawyer Tony becomes obsessed with that naked man that he leaves his car to run after, feeling a “tingling sense of freedom” in the man’s “unburdened stride.” There is Ren, who has traveled to Los Angeles to find his mother, who refuses to leave her little corner of Skid Row. Britt is running from her past when she ends up at a ranch in Twentynine Palms before eventually making it to Los Angeles. And there are Blake and Sam, two violent drifters in search of Wonder Valley where they plan to settle. For these two, Wonder Valley is the stuff of dreams, a near-mythical place that’s really just a half-abandoned community of run-down cabins.

Pochoda deftly moves each of these characters together, making their connection realistic while pulling “Wonder Valley” from the past to the present to illustrate what led each to this particular moment. Los Angeles and Southern California emerge as vital characters, too, showing how the area affects each person. This look at a broad segment of people imbued Pochoda’s last novel, “Visitation Street,” which was one of the bright spots of 2013.

Pochoda delivers a compassionate look at the displaced that treats each with respect and humanity in “Wonder Valley.”

https://www.ivypochoda.com/

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Ivy Pochoda's Wonder Valley is a mesmerizing California novel: EW review

David Canfield is a Staff Editor. He oversees the magazine's books section, and writes film features and awards analysis.

In Wonder Valley , drifters of various stripes make jaunts out west. They fantasize about the vast oases of the Mojave Desert, the soothing crashes of waves along the Pacific coastline, the redemption that comes with one’s arrival in the City of Angels. They expect to see the light — because there, right above them, is the SoCal sun, beating down with enough heat and brightness to force the catharsis right out of them.

The novel, written by Ivy Pochoda ( Visitation Street ), begins in 2010 with the audacious sequence of a young man running naked along the L.A. freeway, zipping by commuters stuck in traffic. It’s liberating but disruptive, rhythmic yet bizarre. That dissonance is reflected in the way certain observers — a mother and son headed to the beach in a stolen car, a lawyer suffocating in the tightness of his vehicle — absorb the scene. Pochoda’s touch is deft here, peeking into intimate spaces before zooming back out to the surreality of the action beyond them. She introduces a collection of characters, each with a specific destination in mind, and stays with them patiently throughout the novel, unpeeling the reasons why they’re on the move.

The story spins out in several directions from the prologue. In 2006, a young woman harboring secrets wanders onto a desert commune where she encounters a dysfunctional family, while a pair of career criminals on the run hole up nearby; later in 2010, the aforementioned lawyer chases the aforementioned nude runner through Los Angeles before getting caught, and a Brooklyn-born teenager who’d just spent years in juvie tracks his mother down across the country. Each subplot is shrouded in mystery, though they all beg the same question: What are these people running from? Their stories collide, if only briefly — that their narratives are all entwined feels cosmic.

In that sense, Wonder Valley is a panorama of despair and yearning, shifting between timelines and locations in its portrait of individuals bound by the desire to escape, forget, and reinvent. It works in contrasts, between the grimy concrete of Skid Row and the pristine beaches of Malibu — between reality and fantasy. It’s a California novel through and through: a collection of character studies drenched in enough sunlight to illuminate the harshest of truths.

Pochoda’s sharpness as a writer comes through in her patience. Early on, it’s clear that, as with many books that share Wonder Valley ’s structure, vignettes will overlap and mysteries will eventually be pieced together. Yet uniquely, revelations arrive without announcement; pivotal moments quietly creep into paragraphs. The ending is magnificently unexpected, almost ingenious, and the surprise factor sneaks up on you. Its subtle brilliance is just that — subtle.

Pochoda demonstrates range in her vivid illustrations of diverse communities. They’re threaded with an underlying melancholy — blots of darkness spotlighted by the blue sky. The intense dry heat of the Mojave, the collection of smells of Skid Row, and the agonizing mellowness of Beverlywood all emanate from her crisp, poetic descriptions. (In one case, a little too much: A chicken slaughter scene early on is not for the squeamish.)

There’s heartbreak and disappointment to spare in Wonder Valley , and every character is rendered with empathy. Each element in the story has texture, from the weather to the architecture to the people inhabiting it. Pochoda lets no one off easy, and, at times, she gets a little carried away sketching out the idiosyncrasies of her setting. But crucially, Wonder Valley has an innate understanding of what makes hiding from home, or taking a leap into the unknown, or ripping off your clothes and racing through traffic, naked, such deeply human impulses. The book tells an essential truth: Everybody’s running from something. B+

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, wonder valley.

In Ivy Pochoda’s WONDER VALLEY, the desert is a harsh and unforgiving place, with nowhere, literally or figuratively, to hide. And the city of Los Angeles is dangerous in its own ways, never quite providing the shelter, anonymity or respite that the characters need. Pochoda sets her story against these stark backdrops, and they heighten the lack of control her characters feel as the novel moves back and forth between 2006 and 2010 and the connections among six people become clear.

In 2006, teenage twins Owen and James are living with their parents on a desert chicken ranch at Twentynine Palms. Their father Patrick is a charismatic, if predatory, guru of sorts to a group of young “interns” who live and work on the ranch, participating in his twisted group therapy. College student athlete Britt is running away from a terrible accident and finds herself at Twentynine Palms, slowly but surely drawn in by Patrick. Though she watches how destructive a force he is --- to the interns and to his family --- she nevertheless is attracted to him and his ideas.

"WONDER VALLEY is a powerfully written page-turner, full of interesting and complex characters.... Both dreamy and gritty, this is an intense and often sorrowful and totally fantastic novel."

Just as Britt begins to settle in with Patrick and the others, Blake and Sam arrive. They are a duo of criminals on the run from the police and the ghosts of their past deeds. Sam, the older and more violent of the two, is seriously injured, and Blake, feeling not just indebted to him but emotionally dependent, will do anything to take care of him. Little does everyone know that there already is a connection among Blake, Sam and James, so the appearance of the dangerous pair introduces an extra layer of peril to an already tense situation.

In 2010, Ren has been recently released from juvenile detention, having served time for a terrible accident many years prior. He sets out from the east coast to the west to find the mother who abandoned him while he was locked out. He finds her living on the streets of Los Angeles and, while possessed of a certain clarity, not any healthier than she was when he last saw her. Like Blake for Sam, Ren is willing to risk so much to protect and care for his mother, even putting himself in jeopardy. Events in the past collide as Ren works and schemes to aid her, as he finds James after many years looking for him, and as Britt meets a man inspired by a sight he understands as an act of rebellion and freedom.

From run-down trailers and long-empty buildings to urban dive bars and suburban homes, Pochoda’s characters are desperate for resolution and peace.

WONDER VALLEY is a powerfully written page-turner, full of interesting and complex characters. Tested by circumstance and environment, they weave in and out of each other’s orbits as Pochoda brings the various strands of her tale together. Southern California smolders and is the perfect backdrop for the book’s themes of family and betrayal, loss and hope, transgression and redemption. Both dreamy and gritty, this is an intense and often sorrowful and totally fantastic novel.

Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman on November 17, 2017

Wonder Valley by Ivy Pochoda

• Publication Date: July 3, 2018
• Genres: Fiction
• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Ecco
• ISBN-10: 0062656368
• ISBN-13: 9780062656360

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Wonder Valley

As a gift from the library universe, my library hold for Wonder Valley by Ivy Pochoda became available during the December holidays, and I had downtime to spend reading. The book opens with a man running naked through rush hour traffic in downtown Los Angeles, drawing police and television reporters in hot pursuit. I thought, this book has potential to show what we're living with here in LA.

Multiple characters whose lives are interwoven represent different parts of Southern California society: the seekers in the desert, the destitute on Skid Row, and the self-absorbed from the Westside. Just as when Angelinos discover that the subject of a newspaper story is a co-worker's cousin, or the middle school music teacher who used to play with a famous pop band, Wonder Valley's characters come to learn of the connections that bind them together, even as those connections might be deadly.

Pochoda further segments the narrative into two time streams: 2006 in the high desert community of Wonder Valley and 2010 in the City of Los Angeles. In 2006, a self-awareness commune explores truth and spiritual enlightenment, only to come into conflict when the commune is compromised by both inside rebellion and vile trespassers. In 2010, the loose ends remaining from the demise of the Wonder Valley community knit back together on Los Angeles' Skid Row and other downtown neighborhoods.

It takes some effort on behalf of the reader, which is richly rewarded, to follow the many characters’ stories across the two time settings, but transformation is the common theme. Characters organize around spiritual beliefs, criminal pursuits, family love, and none of the circumstances endures, nor are they meant to. Settlements in Wonder Valley or on Skid Row are not permanent. Relationships in the high desert and westward prove to be conditional and transactional, even when lives are at stake.

When I first heard of the book, Wonder Valley , I thought, ok, another book about Southern California by an East Coast writer. It will have the usual cliches of dreams pursued then dashed, an ugly duckling blooms into an elegant swan, a teenage outcast is transformed into the creator of the next tech unicorn. Class, ethnic and race differences will be explored, contrasted, and in some small closing scene, reconciled in a manner that eases the general social discomfort that arose as the differences were exposed. Wonder Valley is satisfyingly fresh even as the LA neighborhood settings are familiar. After finishing the book, I wanted to learn how Pochoda could so clearly portray our Los Angeles people without reaching for cliches. I read that she had spent some years here in the city, and the final answer came by turning back to the book’s dedication page: To the writers and artists in the LAMP Arts Program , a Skid Row “housing first” community 

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Wonder Valley

by Ivy Pochoda

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Published Nov 2017 336 pages Genre: Literary Fiction Publication Information

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• Cathy O' Altavista, VA Wonder Valley Life often takes turns based on small actions that have large consequences. The characters in this novel seem to have all ended up in unfortunate circumstances. The way they come together and either survive or not makes for a very entertaining read. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes interesting characters. I felt the descriptions of life on the streets of LA was haunting and accurate. I wished the author had provided more closure on some characters, like Britt and her situation with Andy. I also would have liked more background on other characters. Wonder Valley is a novel that stays with you and makes you re-think what makes people make the choices they do.
• Kenan R. (Liberty, MO) Wonderful and Seedy This was a beautifully written book about a less than attractive subject. Marginalized characters are introduced in 2 time lines, and their stories of questionable choices and loss unfold independently of each other in Southern California from Skid Row to sketchy compounds in the Mojave. Eventually the stories from 2006 intersect in the 2010 story line and that is where I was hooked. The latter half of the book seems to move at a brisker pace as these lost people converge and we look for answers. I felt like the author did an excellent job of tying up the individual story lines without making the package too pretty for our gritty and very real-seeming protagonists. I have already given this book to my husband to read. Although I could see how this book - with it's less than savory characters might not be to everyone's taste - I would recommend it!
• Gary R. (Bolingbrook, IL) Only in California! Quite an interesting read; follow along with the SoCal adventures of the characters as they try to survive. You can feel the heat, you can smell the desert, and it all starts with a traffic jam and a naked jogger. A good read, give it a try!
• Diane S. (Batavia, IL) Wonder Valley A man is running down the Hollywood freeway, he is completely nude, seemingly without a care in the world. As the cars sit in the usual crawling traffic, another man, a man on impulse will leave his car sitting in traffic and take off running, following the naked man. This is the beginning of this novel, which will take us from the streets of Los Angeles, to skid row and out to a desert commune with a divergent group of characters. They are lost souls, trying to escape either something the have done, or do not understand where their lives took a wrong turn, hopeful still that they can turn it around. Gritty and powerful story telling at its best. Street people and the fierce way they guard their spots, try to look out for each there. A commune run by a man who says he has answers, a healer of the psyche, a married man with two twin teenage sons. Two drifters, with a capacity for violence and a man who can't escape a past mistake. All will come together, their stories converge in strange ways. All want to survive, to thrive though all will not be given the chance. For those squeamish about the killing of chickens, though they are killed for food, I suggest skimming chapter four. Other than that I found this book to be wonderfully written, a dark yet hopeful street read. It reminded me in tone and feeling of the book, Gold Fame Citrus, though this is contemporary and not post apocalyptic.
• Mary H. (Ocala, FL) Superb! From the first page of this wonderful new novel, Ivy Pochoda draws the reader into her world of contemporary Los Angeles and the area in the Mojave Desert known as Wonder Valley. While the characters are first introduced in a series of seemingly unrelated vignettes, as the book progresses, the author skillfully merges their stories to intersect and intertwine. This group is from the seamier side of life--living each day under the radar and just trying to survive. I came away with a sense of wonder at the skill it takes to exist on the streets or entirely off the grid and how people with no real home or emotional support find the strength to connect with others where they can and keep going. The author has created such vivid characters that I became immersed in their lives and hoped for better days to come for each of them. Some of their stories are poignant, some heartbreaking, and others uplifting. Each is memorable. I think the best novelists bring us into the world of their story and keep up there so that we don't want the book to end but, when it does, the characters stay with us long after the last page is read. Wonder Valley had that effect on me.
• Patricia L. (Seward, AK) Exit for a closer view... A naked young man is running against traffic on the Pacific Coast Highway, weaving through cars that have reluctantly stopped to avoid hitting him. Tony, a commuter, is uncontrollably compelled to chase him. In Wonder Valley, author Ivy Pochoda slowly unravels the tale that brought the young man to the freeway through Tony, Blake, Britt, Ren and James uncovering the chaos that is life for those unfortunates living in the underbelly of California. Wonder Valley is the location of a farm where "lost kids pretend to find themselves in the middle of nowhere…" James, whose parents run the farm, has yet to find himself. Britt is running from secrets while Blake is seeking revenge in all the wrong places. Ren is looking for his mother and redemption for a mistake made when he was twelve. The plot of Wonder Valley is really secondary to Pochoda's description of life on the streets of California. "…the sound of semis booming up Sixth and the slow roll of garbage trucks kicking up an even worse stench than what already hung in the air. The streets were up early, banging with the rattle and clatter of shopping carts being loaded and pushed away before the cops or the red shirts came." Tony, whose LA is "…palm tree lined streets and houses covered in bougainvillea" finds himself on Skid Row. "…what he should do is go home. Get a coffee on the way and maybe some hand sanitizer." There is a lot to keep straight in this novel. At times it feels like speeding down the freeway trying to find an exit, any exit. But isn't that what California is all about? Recommended for those who seek a more intimate view of the not so beautiful people in the Golden State.
• Cheryl K. (Naples, FL) Redemption...by any other name I am not sure why I requested this book to read and review. I am more than pleased that I did. Ivy Pochoda's "addictive" characters are beautifully developed; their inward struggles tug at the heartstrings of the reader. Seeking personal redemption from the turmoil and disruptions in their lives, they are connected through a seemingly idyllic place called Wonder Valley. Their journeys take them through the steaming Mojave Desert to the unpleasant Skid Row section of Los Angeles. It is the excellent descriptions of these journeys, all connected in some way, and the outcomes reached, that made this reader's experience very rewarding. Book clubs would have spirited discussions with this exceptional novel.

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Wonder Valley: A Novel

• By Ivy Pochoda
• Reviewed by Fatima Azam
• January 26, 2018

The lives of six seemingly unconnected characters collide in L.A.

Ivy Pochoda’s third literary outing, Wonder Valley , is not to be missed, though it does contain a few minor flaws. The opening outlines a chaotic scene: a teenage boy running against traffic down L.A.’s Highway 110. As the police and various reporters relay the scene, the book jumps around to different commuters stuck in the jam. In this manner, most of the characters are introduced.

Some already know the runner; others have no idea who he is but are drawn to him regardless. He becomes the epicenter of this intriguing novel as the text carefully begins unraveling a powerful story of disenchantment, the struggle for more, and the seeming futility of trying to escape the life in which one is stuck.

The offbeat early morning run is set in 2010, but the book quickly shifts to 2006. Throughout, readers are volleyed between these years and offered little bridge-building clues to strengthen any links in the timelines.

In 2006, the stories of Britt (a college dropout whose loss of a tennis scholarship is the least of her worries), Blake and Sam (a criminal duo), and James and Owen (twins separated by a traumatic event) all begin. Conversely, the tales of Tony and Ren stay solidly in 2010.

The novel follows the delicate balance between the life a character lives versus the life for which he or she wishes. Wonder Valley is a chronicle of the quotidian and the ever-present struggle to rise above it. As the character James says to Ren, “We’ve all got stories. And trust me, there’s always someone whose story is worse than yours.”   

Pochoda’s book has many strengths, but the plot feels forced at times. For example, the fact that James, Blake, Britt, and Ren all end up on Skid Row seems farfetched; the author’s puppet strings become visible.

Also, the first two quarters of Wonder Valley bounce haphazardly between characters and timelines. Consequently, the gradual reveal of how the 2006 events relate to — and influence — the later ones are less satisfying than they otherwise might have been.

These flaws aside, however, Pochoda’s novel is compelling. While it’s true that readers hoping for a linear plot may be sorely disappointed, those searching for brilliant characterization will be delighted. For them, the author’s skill creates an experience of total immersion.

Fatima Azam is working on her Ph.D. in comparative literature at the University of Maryland while also teaching English writing and literature. She resides in Maryland, where she is working on her novel. She loves words almost as much as chocolate pastries.

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Review: Wonder Valley

Book by IVY POCHODA

Reviewed by LISA ALEXANDER and JULIA LICHTBLAU

In Ivy Pochoda’s latest novel, Wonder Valley , we find ourselves amidst a scruffy, largely invisible subset of Los Angelenos: drifters, con artists, criminals, quack healers, the homeless. The few in their orbit who have money or a measure of success are in danger of losing their souls. Everyone is close to the edge, all the time. Yearning. Longing. Trying to get someplace. Anywhere but here.

Like Pochoda’s previous book, Visitation Street , which was set in Brooklyn, Wonder Valley is a literary thriller at heart. It has been called “California Noir” and “California Nasty Noir.” It gallops along at a breathless pace. The language is street-smart. Pochoda has a good ear for dialect. It’s also a deeply compassionate book. She dedicates it to the writers and artists in the Lamp Arts Program in L.A.’s Skid Row, where she teaches. Her eyes are wide open with an informed empathy for people most of us step over or block out.

The novel isn’t one story, but a Rubik’s cube of interlocking stories occurring between 2006 and 2010, across the region, from the freeways to Skid Row to the desert to the ocean. Everyone here has a guilty conscience. By accident or on purpose, they’ve hurt, killed, or endangered someone. Their lives have gone irrevocably off-track as a result, and they’re desperate for respite and release, like characters in the Greek myths, pursued by the Fates.

The book begins with an image—a video, really: a morning in 2010, stopped traffic on a snarl of Los Angeles freeways and the beacon of a man, a naked man, running through the lanes: “… shirtless, the hint of swimmer’s muscle rippling below his tanned skin, his arms pumping in a one-two rhythm in sync with the beat of his feet…”

The trapped, bored drivers on their phones are riveted. The naked runner becomes a media event, an Internet sensation. Police helicopters circle. To Tony, a lawyer, a Westside failure, whose marriage is crumbling along with his sense of self, the runner is a metaphor for the freedom he’s lost. Tony is haunted by his own negligence. He let a drunk summer intern go home alone from an office bash, and she was killed by a train. He leaps out of his car, chases and loses the runner. The next thing he knows, he’s on the ground, handcuffed, trying to explain to a cop that he didn’t even know the guy.

In another car, there’s Ren, a Brooklyn boy who spent eight years in juvie for an unintended childhood crime, who returned home to find his family gone, and has come to LA to atone. He’s doing a good deed in a bad way, using a “borrowed” car to take his dying mother to the beach. The police helicopters make him sweat. He just has to get through this moment. (This is as good a place as any to point out that Pochoda has transplanted her most endearing character from Visitation Street to L.A., where he continues to be the street kid equivalent of a mensch. Maybe he’ll finally get the good life he deserves in her next book.)

It takes a while, maybe more than one reading, to follow how all the stories fit together. Pochoda makes the reader work. Narrated in present tense, the stories seem to all be happening consecutively or at the same time. Actually, the first time we meet a character, he/she may be well along in his/her saga, and the next time we connect will be earlier. That’s the case with Ren on the freeway. And Britt, a college tennis star whose crisis of conscience is that she fled from a car accident, leaving a friend unconscious or dead. We meet her in Tony’s second chapter. Drawn by curiosity, or some sixth sense that he could be useful, Tony goes back to the police station to find out what became of the runner—he’s a nuisance to the cops—and Britt, who needs to find the runner herself, recognizes Tony from the online videos. Tony takes her to a dive bar—it’s Saturday morning—and discovers that the runner’s name is James, and a dangerous guy named Blake is also chasing him—and Britt.

The narrative doesn’t so much progress as back and fill, moving each story, then leaving it for another. Each episode is labelled by name, place, and year, to help the reader keep track, as in “James, Twentynine Palms, 2006” or “Tony, Los Angeles, 2010. In any case, the desperation in Wonder Valley gets worse in linear fashion, escalating the literary tension with it. The book’s least redeemable characters drift deep in the desert. Blake is a low-life drug dealer who sells prescription meds, and Sam is a Samoan behemoth/murderer who’s superstitious, mean, and being slowly poisoned by gangrene from a broken leg. These two are also on a collision course with a commune off a desert highway called Wonder Valley not far from Twentynine Palms, a town about 100 miles inland from Los Angeles. James and his brother Owen are the twin sons of a scuzzy “healer” named Patrick and his cynical, disgruntled wife. Britt washes up here too, while running away from herself. The scenes in the commune, where a bunch of stoned and starry-eyed “interns” are manipulated into savaging each other emotionally, slaughtering chickens, and having sex with Patrick, are the most graphic and gruesome of the book.  

Pochoda’s good at holding the camera still, even for a scene of chicken carnage that ends with Patrick forcing one of his twins to eat a hawk he shot after refusing to behead a chicken. The reader might flinch though:  

James slipped off. He plunged into the pond where he could see Owen. His brother was crouched at the edge of the fire. Their father stood over him as he plucked the hawk’s feathers. The quills were stubborn, forcing Owen to yank hard, stretching the bird’s tough skin. Every so often Patrick would hold the bird up, examining its naked flesh. It took Owen nearly an hour to denude the hawk’s body….James ducked under so he wouldn’t have to smell the hawk’s muscled flesh roasting over the fire…When he returned, Owen was back at the fire, eating one of the charred legs. Their father waited until he was finished…before handing him a second helping. Owen held up his hand, clutched his stomach, put a hand over his mouth. But Patrick insisted…”

As seen here, the writing is spare. Every once in a while there’s a poetic line like “the setting sun left the sky over the Sheep Hole Mountains the color of the flesh of an overripe plum,” but Pochoda doesn’t linger over descriptions. The stories are too important.

Everyone here twists and turns, piling on more guilt for bad deeds—new, old, and imagined—until eventually the stories converge and the good find, yes, some measure of redemption. After all that suffering and yearning, the last scene feels transcendent. We are right back where we started, but now Tony, after helping Britt, finds that place which is “essentially and undeniably him. It’s small and solid like the sea-smoothed rocks beneath his feet.” All anyone can ask for in the end.

Lisa Alexander ’s work has appeared, among other places, in Cimarron Review, Fifth Wednesday, Litro, Meridian, Prick of the Spindle, Fugue, and Southern California Review . Her fiction won the UCLA James Kirkwood Award in Creative Writing. She has an MFA in Fiction from Bennington College.

Julia Lichtblau is the book review editor of The Common . Her work is forthcoming in American Fiction 17 and has appeared in The American Scholar, Blackbird, Narrative, The Florida Review, and other publications. She teaches at Drew University and covered international finance in New York and Paris for BusinessWeek and Dow Jones Newswires . She has an MFA in Fiction from Bennington College and lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

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Wonder Valley (Pochoda)

Wonder Valley   Ivy Pochoda, 2017 HaroerCollins 336 pp. ISBN-13: 9780062656353 Summary When a teen runs away from his father’s mysterious commune, he sets in motion a domino effect that will connect six characters desperate for hope and love, set across the sun-bleached canvas of Los Angeles. From the acclaimed author of Visitation Street , a visionary portrait of contemporary Los Angeles in all its facets, from the Mojave Desert to the Pacific, from the 110 to Skid Row . During a typically crowded morning commute, a naked runner is dodging between the stalled cars.  The strange sight makes the local news and captures the imaginations of a stunning cast of misfits and lost souls … ♦ There's Ren, just out of juvie, who travels to LA in search of his mother. ♦ There's Owen and James, teenage twins who live in a desert commune   where their father, a self-proclaimed healer, holds a powerful sway   over his disciples. ♦ There's Britt, who shows up at the commune harboring a dark secret. ♦ There's Tony, a bored and unhappy lawyer who is inspired by the runner. ♦ And there's Blake, a drifter hiding in the desert, doing his best to fight off his most violent instincts. Their lives will all intertwine and come crashing together in a shocking way, one that could only happen in this enchanting, dangerous city. Wonder Valley is a swirling mix of angst, violence, heartache, and yearning—a masterpiece by a writer on the rise. ( From the publisher .)

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LitLovers © 2024

Ivy Pochoda

It's a familiar sight in Los Angeles, traveling on the 110 during peak morning rush hour: an endless sea of commuters, with no respite for miles. But this traffic jam is different-a runner is dodging and weaving between the cars at an astonishing clip. He's moving so fast he's almost a blur. But what's clearly evident is that he is completely naked. This seemingly mundane highway backup turns into a seminal moment for a handful of Angelenos-people whose lives are in desperate need of a change.

Out of this ordinary event, Ivy Pochoda spins a web that stretches all over the City of Angels, from Skid Row to the gentrified enclaves, from the desert to the ocean, all featuring characters in some sort of disarray. There's Ren, from Brooklyn and just out of juvie, who makes his way to LA to look for his mother on Skid Row who has been lost to him for years. There's Owen and James, 14-year old twins who live in a desert commune, where their father, Patrick, a self-proclaimed healer, holds a powerful, dangerous sway over his many disciples. There's Britt, a wayward soul in search of adventure, who ends up the center of Patrick's attention. There's Tony, a successful lawyer who hates his job and his marriage and is looking for meaning. And there's Blake, a violent drifter laying low in the desert, but who unwittingly gets caught up with James and Patrick and the whole sham healing game.

When one of the twins runs away after a disturbing incident on Patrick's commune, a series of events bring these characters, all so real and true, and imbued with endless amounts of empathy and wisdom, together. Whether running away from the past, or looking to reclaim their future, they all will do anything for a semblance of peace.

IVY POCHODA

Novelist & writer.

Copyright 2023 Ivy Pochoda

Wonder Valley

£ 12.99

Ivy Pochoda

North American customers should contact local and online retailers

• Description
• Media coverage

When a teenager runs away from his father’s mysterious commune, he sets in motion a domino effect that connects a cast of six characters who narrate Wonder Valley .

There’s Ren, just out of juvie, who travels to LA in search of his mother. There’s Owen and James, teenage twins who live in a desert commune, where their father, a self-proclaimed healer, holds a powerful sway over his disciples. There’s Britt, who shows up at the commune harbouring a dark secret. There’s Tony, a bored and unhappy lawyer who is inspired by the runner. And there’s Blake, a drifter hiding in the desert, doing his best to fight off his most violent instincts.

Their lives will all intertwine and come crashing together in a shocking way, one that could only happen in this enchanting, dangerous city.

‘Wonder Valley is destined to be a classic L.A. novel. From desert scrub to cold blue sea, it carries an eloquent yet hard-edge take on the contradictions of a place so difficult to define. It’s impossible to put down.’ —Michael Connelly, #1 New York Times bestselling author

‘A vision of Southern California that is at once panoramic and intimate… This novel paints an unforgettable portrait of people who long, above all else, for community and connection.’ —Edan Lepucki, author of California

‘Wonder Valley seethes with the vivid, searching idea of Southern California. But as the intersecting journeys of hippie acolytes, restless hoods, lost boys and all manner of runaways converge, Pochoda enacts a aching dream of home that will possess and haunt you.’ —Smith Henderson, author of Fourth of July Creek

Dimensions: Demy paperback with french flaps Length: 341 pages Published: 20 September 2018 ISBN: 978-1999683344 Cover design: © House of Thought

Publici st: Susie Nicklin at The Indigo Press Agent: Peter Straus at Rogers, Coleridge & White Foreign rights: The Marsh Agency

About the author

Ivy Pochoda is a novelist and writer, previously a world ranked squash player. Her novel Visitation Street was chosen as an Amazon Best Book of 2013 and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and won the 2018 Strand Critics Award for Best Novel.

She has written for a number of outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books and The Huffington Post . She teaches creative writing at the Lamp Arts Studio in Skid Row.

Her book, Wonder Valley , was published in September 2018.

Los Angeles, 2010

He is almost beautiful – running with the San Gabriels over one shoulder, the rise of the Hollywood Freeway as it arcs above the Pasadena Freeway over the other. He is shirtless, the hint of swimmer’s muscle rippling below his tanned skin, his arms pumping in a one-two rhythm in sync with the beat of his feet. There is a chance you envy him.

Seven a.m. and traffic is already jammed through downtown, ground to a standstill as cars attempt to cross five lanes, moving in increments so small their progress is nearly invisible. They merge in jerks and starts from the Pasadena Freeway onto the Hollywood or the Santa Ana. But he is flowing freely, reverse commuting through the stalled vehicles.

The drivers watch from behind their steering wheels, distracted from toggling between radio stations, fixing their makeup in the rearview, talking to friends back east for whom the day is fully formed. They left home early, hoping to avoid the bumper to bumper, the inevitable slowdown of their mornings. They’ve mastered their mathematical calculations – the distance x rate x time of the trip to work. Yet they are stuck. In this city of drivers, he is a rebuke.

He runs unburdened by the hundreds of sacrifices these commuters have made to arrive at this traffic jam on time – the breakfast missed, the children unseen, the husband abandoned in bed, the night cut short on account of the early morning, the weak gas station coffee, the unpleasant carpool, the sleep lost, the hasty shower, last night’s clothes, last night’s makeup.

He ignores the commuters sealed off in their climate-controlled cars, trapped in the first news cycle and the wheel of Top 40. He holds a straight line through the morning’s small desperations, the problems waiting to unfold, the desire to be elsewhere, to be anywhere but here today and tomorrow and all the mornings that run together into one citywide tangle of freeways and on-ramp closures and Sig Alerts, a whole day narrowed to the stop and go.

His expression is mid-marathon serene, focused on the goal and not yet overwhelmed by the distance. He shows no strain. But the woman in the battered soft-top convertible will say he looked drugged. The man in a souped-up hatchback claims he was crazy-high, totally loco, you know what I mean. A couple of teenage girls driving an SUV way beyond their pay grade insist that, although they barely noticed him, he looked like a superhero, but not one of the cool ones.

The day is an indeterminate, weatherless gray. The sun is just another thing delayed this morning. Beneath the 10, the air over the bungalows of West Adams and Pico-Union is a dull, apocalyptic color. The color of bad things or their aftermath.

The other city – the remembered and imagined one – stretches west, past the sprawling ethnic neighborhoods where Koreans overlap with Salvadorans and Armenians back into Thais. It begins on the big-name crosstown boulevards lined with deco theaters, faded tropical motels, and restaurants with sentinel valets, and ends where the streets run into the ocean. But in this trench where the 110 sinks through downtown, that place is barely a memory. Here there is only the jam of the cars and the blank faces of the glass towers.

The runner is on pace for an eight-minute mile or so it seems to the man behind the wheel of his SUV who woke up late and didn’t have time for his own jog. He missed his pre-dawn tour of Beverlywood, the empty silence of the residential neighborhood when he visits other people’s cul-de-sacs, peering into the living rooms of dark houses as his pedometer records his footsteps, marking calories and distance until the morning’s ritual is complete. He wonders what went unseen – coyotes slinking home before sunup, a car haphazardly left in a driveway after one too many, a man sleeping in the blue glare of his TV, a teenager sneaking through her back gate, liquor bottles shoved into bags and left at someone else’s curb. During these stolen hours before his wife and kids need him, he believes he glimpses his neighborhood’s secret soul, seeing beyond the façades of the bungalows and the manicured squares of unremarkable lawns into hidden discontents.

There is never anyone to encourage him on his early morning runs, no one to witness his labored breathing in the sixth mile, his heroic triumph over his ebbing willpower. Watching the runner navigate the stationary cars, this driver is aware of the jellied muscles of his own legs after a weekend’s drinking.

He wants to reach back for the hour he cheated from himself, when he lay in bed and instead of lacing up his shoes, rolled over, checking the clock to see how long before others needed him. Without his run, today will belong to the commuters in their cars, to the team waiting for him at work, and now to this shirtless jogger cutting through traffic on the 110.

He rolls down his window and wedges his torso out to watch the runner pass. The man’s mechanics aren’t bad – his chest upright, shoulders relaxed, hands not balled into fists. He cups a hand over his mouth, shouting at the man to keep going. Then he sees that the runner is naked. He pulls back inside, raises the window, and busies himself with his cell phone, moving on to the next thing in his day .

Shirley Whiteside for Book Oxygen, 20 September 2018:  ‘Review: Wonder Valley’

Fatima Azam for Washington Independent, 26 January 2018:  ‘Wonder Valley: A Novel’

Lisa Alexander and Julia Lichtblau for The Common , 26 January 2018: ‘Review: Wonder Valley’

Smith Henderson for The Los Angeles Review of Books , 1 January 2018:  ‘Genre Be Damned: Smith Henderson interviews Ivy Pochoda ‘

Michael Natalie for The Brooklyn Rail, 17 December 2017: ‘Structures in Service to Wonder: Ivy Pochoda’s Wonder Valley’

Jane Gayduk for  Interview Magazine, 14 November 2017:  ‘Ivy Pochada’s new novel is an ode to the misunderstood parts (and people) of California’

Michael Schaub for The Los Angeles Times , 10 November 2017: ‘Wonder Valley is an L.A. thriller that refuses to let readers look away’

National Public Radio, 10 November 2017: ‘Author Interview: In ‘Wonder Valley’ There’s More Than One Los Angeles’

David Canfield for  Entertainment Weekly , 10 November 2017: ‘Ivy Pochoda’s  Wonder Valley is a mesmerizing California novel: EW review’

Kristopher for BOLO Books, 7 November 2017:  ‘Wonder Valley – The BOLO Books Review’

Thane Tierney for  Book Page, November 2017:  ‘Wonder Valley’

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Book Review: ‘Wonder Valley’ Is A Beautifully Written Story

[yasr_overall_rating]  

When a teen runs away from his father’s mysterious commune, he sets in motion a domino effect that will connect six characters desperate for hope and love, set across the sun-bleached canvas of Los Angeles.

‘Wonder Valley’ is a very strange mixture of hope and despair, love and hate and a yearning for isolation. This story is a combination of people you could know, people that frighten you and a touch of violence that leaves you breathless. Author Ivy Pochoda has brought to life a myriad of larger-than-life characters for your reading entertainment.

Patrick runs a commune in the desert, a haven for lost souls and as a self-professed healer, access to a plethora of those waiting to be saved, or used. Blake and Sam are on the run and their muted violence is terrifying and they find a home in the commune. Britt has to expiate her sins and doesn’t care if lying with Patrick, in spite of his wife, is a way, as twisted as it seems. Ren, just out of jail, is searching for his mother. She lives on skid row and the people, including his mother, that he meets, living on the streets, is wonderfully insightful.

Tony, a very successful lawyer, has all he needs but realizes that he has nothing. Driving to work one day, he sees a naked runner, weaving in and out of traffic and is powerfully moved to follow the runner and ask him why. The journey Pochoda takes you on is quite remarkable and I’m positive that what I took away from it will not be the same as you.

At the end of the day, everyone has an answer, of sorts, to their searching and you are left a little bewildered as not all ends are tied up neatly for you. It is enjoyable and the scope of what is presented to you is largely well-drawn and a very good read!

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Ann McDonald

Ann is originally from Dublin, Ireland and currently lives in Dallas, Texas. She was the secretary to the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland for many years and is an avid book reader and reviewer.

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Wonder Valley: A Novel Kindle Edition

NPR Best Book of 2017

Los Angeles Times Best Fiction Pick

Refinery29 Best Book of the Year

BOLO Books Top Read of 2017

“Destined to be a classic L.A. novel.”—Michael Connelly

When a teen runs away from his father’s mysterious commune, he sets in motion a domino effect that will connect six characters desperate for hope and love, set across the sun-bleached canvas of Los Angeles.

From the acclaimed author of Visitation Street , a visionary portrait of contemporary Los Angeles in all its facets, from the Mojave Desert to the Pacific, from the 110 to Skid Row.

During a typically crowded morning commute, a naked runner is dodging between the stalled cars.  The strange sight makes the local news and captures the imaginations of a stunning cast of misfits and lost souls.

There's Ren, just out of juvie, who travels to LA in search of his mother. There's Owen and James, teenage twins who live in a desert commune, where their father, a self-proclaimed healer, holds a powerful sway over his disciples. There's Britt, who shows up at the commune harboring a dark secret. There's Tony, a bored and unhappy lawyer who is inspired by the runner. And there's Blake, a drifter hiding in the desert, doing his best to fight off his most violent instincts.  Their lives will all intertwine and come crashing together in a shocking way, one that could only happen in this enchanting, dangerous city.

Wonder Valley is a swirling mix of angst, violence, heartache, and yearning—a masterpiece by a writer on the rise.

• Print length 334 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publisher Ecco
• Publication date November 7, 2017
• File size 4407 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
• See all details

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Editorial Reviews

“Incandescent… Pochoda keeps you guessing while bringing these lost souls wonderfully, intensely alive.” — People , Book of the Week

“A dizzying, kaleidoscopic thriller that refuses to let readers look away from the dark side of Southern California. . . . Impossible to put down. . . . It’s the memorable characters and beautiful prose that make the novel so successful. . . . Unexpected and pitch-perfect.” — Los Angeles Times

“Audacious. . . . Each character is realized with vivid empathy. . . . A richly Californian novel, drenched in enough sunlight to illuminate the harshest of truths.” — Entertainment Weekly

“Enthralling. . . . A compassionate look at the displaced that treats each with respect and humanity.” — Associated Press

“Pochoda’s steady hand and sharp eye keep all of her characters moving swiftly and gracefully through the variegated L.A. landscape.” — LitHub

“Pochoda is a masterful storyteller. . . . [She’s] come up with a harmonious narrative that showcases the human condition, full of ecstasy, angst, rage, and beauty.” — Nylon Magazine

“Pochoda is a master. . . . It’s not a far stretch to consider Pochoda to be in company of James Ellroy, Michael Connelly and T. Jefferson Parker. . . . It wouldn’t be a big surprise to find Wonder Valley on the short list for several awards.” — BookPage

“Evoked by Pochoda in shimmering detail. . . . Absorbing, finely detailed, nasty California noir.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Pochoda has written a novel alive with empathy for the dispossessed and detailed description of the California landscape.” — Publishers Weekly

“Ambitious, absorbing. . . . Pochoda paints southern California with a vibrant brush, rendering an evocative landscape on which her desperate characters seek out redemption and rejuvenation.” — Booklist

“Pochoda takes readers places they don’t often see with authenticity and clarity. . . . Vivid and sympathetic.” — Library Journal

“ Wonder Valley seethes with the vivid, searching idea of southern California. But as the intersecting journeys of hippie acolytes, restless hoods, lost boys and all manner of runaways converge, Pochoda enacts an aching dream of home that will possess and haunt you.” — Smith Henderson, author of Fourth of July Creek

“ Wonder Valley is destined to be a classic L.A. novel. From desert scrub to cold blue sea, it carries an eloquent yet hard-edge take on the contradictions of a place so difficult to define. It’s impossible to put down.” — Michael Connelly, author of The Wrong Side of Goodbye

“A vision of Southern California that is at once panoramic and intimate. . . . This novel paints an unforgettable portrait of people who long, above all else, for community and connection.” — Edan Lepucki, author of California

From the Back Cover

There’s Ren, just out of juvie, who travels to L.A. in search of his mother. Owen and James are teenage twins who live in a desert commune, where their father, a self-proclaimed healer, holds a powerful sway over his disciples. There’s Britt, who shows up at the commune harboring a dark secret. Tony, an unhappy lawyer, finds inspiration from an unlikely source. And there’s Blake, a drifter hiding in the desert, doing his best to fight off his most violent instincts. Their lives will come crashing together in a shocking way that could only happen in this enchanting, dangerous city.

About the Author

Ivy Pochoda grew up in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, and is a former professional squash player. She is the author of The Art of Disappearing and Visitation Street . She now lives in Los Angeles with her family.

Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B06X3TXY8H
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ecco (November 7, 2017)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 7, 2017
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 4407 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 334 pages
• #2,036 in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Literary Fiction
• #2,334 in Fiction Urban Life
• #3,648 in Contemporary Literary Fiction

About the author

Ivy pochoda.

Ivy Pochoda is the author of Wonder Valley, Visitation Street, These Women, and Sing Her Down. She won the 2018 Strand Critics Award for Best Novel and the Prix Page America in France, and has been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Edgar Award, among other prizes.

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Comic Books Reviews

Comic Books

‘uncanny valley’ #1 blends cartoon wonder and deep emotion for a proper adventure.

‘Uncanny Valley’ will mess with your head and heart in the very best ways.

Writer-artist Tony Fleecs has struck upon a fairly winning “formula” with his recent comics. There’s Silence of the Lambs , but with dogs . Night of the Living Dead , but with cats . And, my personal fave, WildCats , but with a small-town Clerks . From this approach, Fleecs and his various collaborators have been able to remix and repurpose classic story tropes/arcs with new ideas, energies, and end goals to tell some generally effective genre stories.

Now, Fleecs has joined forces with artist Dave Wachter and letterer Pat Brosseau for perhaps his most intriguing and promising “this, but” book to date, Uncanny Valley .

There’s a few ways to really describe Uncanny Valley . I like Who Framed Roger Rabbit , but with a latchkey kid. Fleecs himself has described it as Planetary or Firebreather “but what if it was cartoons.” Either way, it’s a really interesting spin, as we follow a young boy, Oliver, as his already tenuous world is thrown upside down when cartoons suddenly enter our reality.

It’s really the execution of this story that really makes all the difference. Because, as I’ve touched on already, the concept is familiar enough — lots of stories have been interested in the relationship between fiction and reality as well as notions of escapism, feeling like an outsider, and the need for a more magical world. (The aforementioned Roger Rabbit but also Neverending Stor y, Cool World , Space Jam , etc.) And already in its first issue, Uncanny Valley is very much interested in those same ideas, but Fleecs tries to make it different enough through a few means.

For one, we spend a lot of issue #1 getting to know Oliver — he’s a sweet, good-natured kid who is clearly struggling with a lack of identity and a larger family structure, and he acts out in a way that desperately seeks that connection. (His mother is treated sympathetically enough — her struggle to stay afloat, and manage some larger issues that are hinted at leading into the “climax” of #1, makes her a well-rounded player in this book while still extending Oliver’s own “arc.”) And through that focus on Oliver, we’re grounded in a way that makes this a compelling, sometimes painfully resonant story — a boy seeking his place in a way that feels wholly familiar to anyone, say, with divorced parents.

But I also think it’s the speed and efficiency of the narrative’s “launch” that really matters. Fleecs gives us plenty of backstory and connective potential, but he also moves us right along with the utmost efficiency. We hit all the big beats and still get ample time for the cartoon “stuff,” and from that process, the sharp injection of magic feels more shocking and engaging. And speaking of shocking, Fleecs’ script makes little decisions to complicate what could be a pretty straightforward story (that’s about a boy’s connection to a cartoon world). It’s the stuff with his mom I mentioned earlier and even some talking crows — it’s just textured enough that until the end of issue #1, we’re left guessing what’s really going on with all of this intense fantasy stuff.

Still, I think that as you move through issue #1 into the finale, you may preemptively guess Oliver’s role in all of this. But the obviousness (or the lack thereof) doesn’t really matter — the story itself is built in a way that no matter when you realize the true and real scope of this tale, it feels all the more alluring. Your guess may be confirmed early enough, but that doesn’t change how satisfying this story is in telling a deeply human story. And while a lot of that is Fleecs’ work with nailing his approach to crafting stories, it’s also very much in the efforts of Wachter.

Having apparently pushed himself creatively with this book, Wachter’s visuals here feel especially powerful. Just as the story begins in the “real world,” Wachter creates a really compelling version of reality. There’s some great textures and feelings here — like a more grounded Norman Rockwell painting — and yet it balances enough of a cartoony vibe to perhaps hint at what’s coming down the pipeline. And when we do get to the cartoon stuff, Wachter manages that infusion in a really effective way. For one, he expertly references some beloved characters and concepts, but in a way that pays homage to feelings and energies as opposed to anything too directly. The cartoon stuff feels both wholly disconnected from and still aligned with the real world — there’s a vividness that’s meant to grab you by the eyeballs but done in a way that you begin to see and feel the way these worlds are coming together.

Even when the cartoon stuff feels over-the-top — as with the introduction of a new family member for Oliver — it’s done as to still maintain some sense of worldly grit and heft, and that is important in our immersion here and pulling the rug out from under our feet in a way that remains effective and never too overwhelming. And, sure, I do think the real world bits are more appealing (I could spend all day experiencing the way it reflects ideas of nostalgia and this sense of Americana gone wrong). But the cartoon stuff plays its part — it’s about employing it with firmness and intention to maximize its place in our world and bring us slowly and deliberately into a world where we can’t tell up from down, real from fiction. In that process, the book’s premise comes alive in some massively important ways.

I think there’s going to be some readers who might find Uncanny Valley too familiar and even a touch formulaic. But to those people I say, “Yeah, and?” Because in reading the various Fleecs-penned books, what I always take away from it isn’t the gimmicky nature or callbacks to beloved books/films/comics/etc. — it’s the sheer humanity of it all. The way that we reuse and rework pop culture to explore some big ideas about ourselves and give our emotions the chance to live out in the world.

And in the case of Uncanny Valley , the humanity here is deep and rich, a story about finding both your people and place in the world in even the most unexpected of places. A tale of a young man who wants to find a family no matter how it may ultimately look. Who cares about the formula when the answer is “storytelling gold.”

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