"The first time Natalie Singer learns about California, she's nine, tucked between library stacks, a Canadian blizzard outside. In a book called All About California, she reads of mythological griffins, rupturing earthquakes, furnace deserts, and Hollywood stars, and an imprinting takes place. Could California be an answer to her dull existence in the nowhere of the North and the family secrets seeping out from behind closed doors? The fantasy of California blooms out of Singer's father's collection of Beach Boys records, her pretty mother's perfect red nails, the boys and men she tries hungrily to connect with, and the haunting memory of being interrogated on a courtroom witness stand. At sixteen, she finally goes west to the place of her obsessions to find out whether you can cure longing with landscape alone. Reckoning with the power that family and cultural myths hold over us, California Calling is a universal coming-of-age story and one woman's lyrical, achingly honest search for a state of belonging."--Provided by publisher.