Böcker av Peter Boffey

Three single mothers of three bastard children from three generations, each one vitally connected to a ghost town located where sea meets land on Santa Cruz County's northern coast.In 1959 Kaitlin Lowrie resettles in Cliffport with her mother and her son - the only household hanging on in an all-but-forgotten locale. But in 1965 Janice McLoughlin, long-absentee landlady, shows up and is determined to sell the place. Elisabeth Lowrie despairs of their being evicted from her cherished, lifelong home.It falls to the feisty Lowrie daughter to span the gap between the two older women. While the outspoken Jan tells her life story aloud, Katie has also to read her mother's notebooks in the more formal language of Elise's memoir. Katie dreams then schemes how to stay living on the land.In their letters, phone calls, journals, and conversations, we hear the distinct yet disparate voices of these strong-willed women - tough on the outside, sensitive within - as they come to terms with one another and themselves. Katie, Elise, Jan: three naked ladies, each in her own way as resilient, enduring, and irrepressible as the wild bulbous Amaryllis belladonna plants rooted out West and surviving up and down California's Central Coast.

In Volume I, we heard the distinct yet disparate voices of Elisabeth and Katelyn Lowrie, and Jan McLoughlin, as they struggled to come to terms with one another and themselves. We witnessed Elise-despairing over failing communications with her headstrong daughter-retreat to the attic, there to embark upon her memoir composed as a long letter to her only child. Meanwhile, downstairs, buoyed up by her bottles of whisky and cartons of unfiltered cigarettes, Jan-the outspoken landowner returning after fifty years-launches out on telling her life story to Katie aloud.In Volume II, we watch Katie spanning the gap between the two older women while hatching a plan that may enable the Lowries (and Donald Duncan, Katie's 10-year-old son) to remain living on the place.Three single mothers of three bastard children from three generations, each of whom claims Cliffport-a ghost town on Santa Cruz County's northern coast-as her rightful home. Three women baring their hearts and minds to one another and to us. Three naked ladies, each in her own way as resilient, enduring, and irrepressible as the wild bulbous Amaryllis belladonna plants rooted out West, and surviving on their own along California's Central Coast.