โAย glorious debut...it will rouse your deepest well of empathy.โย โAdriana Trigiani, bestselling author of The Good Left Undone
โThis novel will live alongside classics of young womanhood.โย โSusan 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-lawโs property, encounters the woman she used to loveโleading Tessa to question the very foundations of the life sheโs 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 Tessaโs 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 adulthoodโuntil 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 Tessaโs journey from trauma to healing, and it introduces us to one of the most indelible female characters since Bone Boatwright in Dorothy Allisonโs Bastard Out of Carolina or Ruth Langmore in Ozark.