The Uncrowned Queen of
​Magnetic Springs
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Hollywood Bowl


​
​The Uncrowned Queen of Magnetic Springs


​
"Every metamorphosis requires a detour between worlds."


A debut novel by Barbara Tannenbaum

About the Book


Concept

Every metamorphosis requires a detour between worlds.

In Los Angeles during the socially turbulent 1970s, young Renee Kalman discovers the only way to seize an adventurous romance with another woman is to explore why her mother abandoned a promising musical career in the post-war era. ​

Synopsis

Backstage at the Hollywood Bowl, Renee works a summer job surrounded by divas and sirens capable of unleashing buried desires with their personal magnetism. But a magnet's power can attract or repel. The girl is caught between the push of her colleagues, ambitious lesbians and gay men who seek their footing in a new era, and the pull of her mother's self-imposed, suburban isolation. 

Renee's mother, Adele Kalman, was once a pianist for a popular jazz combo, the Ginger Snaps. The novel opens when the group's most famous member, Rudy Menglepuss, collapses and dies outside a Santa Monica restaurant. Soon, Renee is drawn into the orbit of her mother's former world, taking a journey through the multiple eras of Magnetic Springs. As the name of a gay disco in 1978, a seedy nightclub in her mother's time, and the original name of West Hollywood, Magnetic Springs serves as a portal to discoveries that enable Renee Kalman to find a strategy for her life, clarify her mother's choices, seize her gay identity, and heal the rift between generations.

Events

At Book Passage, San Francisco, November 2014
Litquake reading, San Francisco, October 2015 From left: Leah Brooks, Barbara Tannenbaum
Book Club of California, November 2015 From left: Elizabeth McKenzie (Catamaran's fiction editor), Barbara Tannenbaum, Catherine Segurson (Catamaran's editor in chief)
Catamaran issue release party at Bonny Doon Vineyard, March 2015
At Hennessey+Ingalls bookstore, AWP offsite event, Los Angeles, March 2016
Catamaran reading at Stories Books and Cafe, Echo Park, Event for the Los Angeles Times Book Festival, April 2015 L to R: Poet Aleida Rodriguez, Editor Catherine Segurson, Author Barbara Tannenbaum

Published Excerpts &
​Award Nominations

​Catamaran Literary Reader
Spring 2015, Catamaran Literary Reader
[download pdf]
Spring 2015, Catamaran Literary Reader
The excerpt "Lost and Found at the Hollywood Bowl" was nominated for a 2016 Pushcart Prize
Editor: Catherine Segurson​

​Chicago Quarterly Review
Fall 2015, Chicago Quarterly Review
"The Siren Comes to Magnetic Springs"
Published in CQR, Fall 2015
Editor: Syed Haider

Ten Percent Interview March 2015​

Advance Praise

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​​Elizabeth McKenzie (author of the bestselling The Portable Veblen) writes: 

​"As lush and extravagant as an opera that pulls together the best of magical realism and literary fiction, Barbara Tannenbaum’s The Uncrowned Queen of Magnetic Springs is a canny, modern retelling of Dido and Aeneas set in Los Angeles, where a young woman embarks on an odyssey of self-discovery. A wonderful and inventive book."
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​Norman M. Klein (author of The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory and The Imaginary 20th Century) writes:
 
"It is often said that action is character, that everything one sees is struggling to tell you what you are not ready to hear. Barbara Tannenbaum’s novel takes you through that kind of journey. The principal character, Renee, is frozen by details in her mother’s story that have remained secret. The city of Los Angeles, from one end to the other, is called up to help Renee uncover a strategy for her life and help her move toward a gay identity."
 
"Baudelaire often wrote about three qualities that capture a single moment in time: luxe (as in taste and power); calm (the patience to see); and volupté (the way that the senses put their fragrance upon things). This is a novel to be savored in that way. It is carefully wrought, patient, and rewarding in the way that moments of discovery are rewarding. This is a tale about multipliers, not simply a novel about Renee coming of age, but rather about three generations of women making a simple, generous discovery possible."
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​Barbara Tannenbaum is an award-winning journalist and author based in San Rafael, California. Her essays and journalism pieces have been published in the New York Times, The Daily Beast, Salon.com, San Francisco magazine, Science Today, Stanford magazine, Columbia University's Superscript magazine, LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, Catamaran Literary Reader, and many other publications. She has held editorial positions at San Francisco Focus magazine, Edutopia.org, and California Academy of Sciences. She has also served as a board member with the California History Association, the National Association of LGBT Journalists, and San Francisco's Rainbow Honor Walk.
 
To learn more about Barbara Tannenbaum, visit her website. 

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CONTACT

 (415) 246-9699
[email protected]
www.tannenbaum-novel.com
www.barbaratannenbaum.com 


​
​© 2019-2020 Barbara Tannenbaum 
All Rights Reserved
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