Shannon Turlington

This week I’m recommending Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins, which is a bit of a dystopia and a bit of a post-apocalypse and a bit of magical realism and is the latest book I’ve read set in the American Southwest. In the near future, drought has rendered the Southwestern United States nearly uninhabitable. A mountain-high sea dune called the Amargosa has spread over large portions of the Mojave Desert in Southern California. Most people have evacuated, but some remain in Los Angeles, living off rationed soda and scavenging from abandoned homes of millionaires. Ray and Luz are two of them, but when they take a two-year-old girl, they realize they need to give her a better life. They set out on a treacherous crossing of the desert, where they encounter a cult-like group surviving at the edges of the great dune sea.