Revitalizing ‘Booktail’: The Gold Fame Citrus

In Claire Vaye Watkins’s lyrical eco-horror novel, Gold Fame Citrus, the Southwestern United States has been decimated by an apocalyptic drought that’s created an enormous wasteland. Two “Mojavs,” Ray and Luz, live among the ruins in a Hollywood starlet’s former Southern California home. (Mojavs are those from California who were made refugees by the drought.) When Ray and Luz take charge of a neglected toddler they call Ig, their already-broken world splits open. Can they survive together, or find a way to truly live?

A strange, heartrending odyssey, Gold Fame Citrus is as tense as it is beautiful.

Designed to quench your thirst, this refreshing “booktail” is made with juicy watermelon, strawberry, and lemon and is sweetened with agave, a desert plant. The base liquor is vodka, selected for its deceptively watery appearance. Likewise, watermelon is one of the most hydrating fruits. Ironically, the car Ray and Luz drive through the wasteland is called the Melon. After they run into trouble, Ray fantasizes about rescue, complete with “slurping smiles of watermelon.” Meanwhile, strawberries appear several times in the novel, sometimes filled with dust or grown on the edge of a dune. Or as a mere memory: Outside Santa Clarita, the trio pass through what was once strawberry country but is now barren land. And earlier, when Luz and Ray carry off Ig, they flee past the remains of what used to be a lemon tree, an ominous omen. Indeed, lemon is evocative of a soured landscape: “The water, the green, the mammalian, the tropical, the semitropical, the leafy, the verdant, the motherloving citrus, all of it was denied them and had been denied them so long that with each day, each project, it became more and more impossible to conceive of a time when it had not been denied them.”

Finally, the drink is garnished with a wistful sprig of refreshing mint.•

Join us on May 15 at 5 p.m. Pacific time, when Claire Vaye Watkins will sit down with CBC host John Freeman and special guest Karen Russell to discuss Gold Fame Citrus. Register for the Zoom conversation here.