About the Book
ConceptEvery 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. SynopsisBackstage 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 |
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