Golden State (Kindle Single)

From award-winning author Scott O€Connor (Untouchable, Half World), Golden State is a funny, pointedly heartfelt story about running away, growing up, and knowing when you€ve truly found a home.

Meet Claire, a painfully awkward teenaged boy with long hair, crooked teeth, and zero social skills. Fleeing creditors and a string of bad relationships, Claire€s mother Diane has moved their two-person family from snowy Upstate New York to the sun-and-smog outskirts of Los Angeles in search of a fresh start. While Diane chases her dream of appearing on The Price is Right and a possible reconciliation with an old flame, Claire tries to fit in with his new neighborhood of wealthy jocks and surf-kids. But California is not all they imagined it would be, and as Diane€s prospects dim, Claire finds himself drawn into an unlikely friendship with an aging rock musician, whose splintering marriage threatens to upend what little stability Claire and his mother have found on the West Coast.

An "amazing new talent [in] the world of fiction" (Library Journal), Scott O'Connor writes €œin a voice so insistently stirring, you want to lean in close to catch every word." (The New York Times). He is the author of the novella Among Wolves and the novels Half World and Untouchable. Golden State appears in Scott O'Connor's story collection, Thalassa.

Cover design by Evan Twohy.