What is real when seen through the eyes of a child? When does the harshness of reality transform idyllic memories? The young narrator of Santa Rosa seeks the answers to these questions as she tries to make sense of the disintegration of her parents' marriage-a process echoed by the slow disintegration of their neighbourhood.

In subtle poetic prose, Wendy McGrath evokes afternoons at the fair captured in overexposed photographs, and a family's disquieting day at the beach as moments that exist apart from time, in a place where every sense is heightened, and where every memory is sharpened as if in a lucid dream where understanding lies just beyond reach.