OCTOBER
Joshua Wheeler’s new novel, The High Heaven, focuses on Izzy, a child who finds herself taken in by a rancher after the doomsday cult in which she was raised comes in conflict with the local sheriff. True Grit meets Philip K. Dick as Wheeler expertly limns his heroine’s space-age travels in prose that skitters between lyrical and vernacular and sticks the landing.
In California Rewritten: A Journey Through the Golden State’s New Literature, John Freeman collects over 50 essays from his tenure as the host of Alta Journal’s California Book Club, centered on the state’s 21st-century canon (see “A Calling to See the World”).
True Nature: The Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen, Lance Richardson’s deeply researched biography, eight years in the making, traces the complex journey of this novelist, environmental writer, Zen master, and, briefly, CIA agent (see “A Wild Life”).
Max Delsohn’s debut short story collection, Crawl, is a deep dive into trans life in 2010s Seattle. His characters make their way through dive bars and bathhouses, surviving intrusive interrogations by cis employers and experiencing a host of other moving, but often funny, millennial adventures.
This roundup appears in Issue 33 of Alta Journal.
SUBSCRIBE
And I’ll Take Out Your Eyes, a blazing novelistic debut from queer Chicano writer A.M. Sosa, takes on the protagonist’s youthful struggles on the hardscrabble streets of Stockton—difficulties made incalculably worse by a curse laid on him at the age of seven. Sosa dissects problems of class, race, and gender with passion and merciless, no-bullshit humor.
In A Hollywood Ending: The Dreams and Drama of the LeBron Lakers, veteran NBA journalist Yaron Weitzman explores the triumphs and tragedies of the franchise, which are complicated by the differing agendas of LeBron James and Lakers owner Jeanie Buss.
Sacrament, from Susan Straight, depicts the medical and personal struggles of a group of dedicated nurses working in the ICU ward of a San Bernardino hospital—and living in a nearby RV to protect the health of their families—at the height of the COVID pandemic.
Closing out the month, the memoir Love Will Save Us, Right? is a fiercely funny account of the trials Suzette Partido faced raising her neurodivergent son while dealing with food insecurity and longtime familial dysfunction. Partido, a former City Lights Bookstore clerk who has been compared to Anne Lamott and Dorothy Allison, is the real deal.
NOVEMBER
Former San Francisco poet laureate devorah major’s latest collection, Word Time, is an eloquent addition to her body of work. A poem about playing chess turns into a meditation on king-size beds, King Tut, King Kong, and Martin Luther King. Such delights are delivered with the ease of a child stepping over stones—though not one to be messed with.
When Caesar Was King: How Sid Caesar Reinvented American Comedy, from David Margolick, provides a blow-by-blow of the comic’s rise and his later struggles to remain relevant in a changing Hollywood.
Hit the road with a new edition of Baby Driver: A Story About Myself, Jan Kerouac’s 1981 autobiographical novel about her life and hard times as the only child of Jack Kerouac and Joan Haverty (with a new introduction by Amanda Fortini).
December
Television, writer-director Lauren Rothery’s fiction debut, is a smart, tart, Didionesque depiction of an aging A-list star who tries to turn back time by auctioning off his salary to a fan and wooing an Instagram model, to the bemusement of his best friend (and former lover).
How to Cook a Coyote: The Joy of Old Age, from food writer and critic Betty Fussell, still going strong at 98, provides her reflections on impending mortality after moving from Manhattan to a Montecito retirement home. The memoir also casts a fond, sometimes pointed, look back at past friends, enemies, and lovers.
Huguette, by San Francisco–based mystery queen Cara Black, is the tale of a 17-year-old who is forced to flee her father’s enemies in post–World War II France and outwits them with help from police officer Claude Leduc.
Davey Davis’s Casanova 20: Or, Hot World is a Jamesian portrait of Adrian, a fading beauty whose life changes when he learns that his best friend, a famous painter living in Northern California, is dying.•
EDITOR’S PICK
Joyride: A Memoir
By Susan Orlean
Joyride, by journalist Susan Orlean, couldn’t be more aptly titled. It’s an indelible memoir about the stories behind Orlean’s books and a career spent reporting on other people (and animals). Orlean’s exuberant curiosity about the ordinary and the extraordinary alike has led to eye-opening work about everything from a 10-year-old boy to an orchid thief to Rin Tin Tin and a head librarian in Los Angeles. Here, she vividly recounts her experiences investigating these and other stories, offering thoughtful insights along the way. —Anita Felicelli•
Paul Wilner is a longtime journalist, poet, and critic who lives in Monterey County. He is the former editor of the San Francisco Examiner Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle Style section and managing editor of the Hollywood Reporter. His work has been published in the Paris Review, New York Times, ZYZZYVA magazine, Barnes and Noble Review, Los Angeles Times and many other publications.
