Golden State: A Novel

"What I believe is this: there is no divine flow chart, no elegant spiritual mathematics through which our lives are processed. Events occur, we respond to them, we make choices, and our lives are shaped accordingly."Julie Walker's life has been shaped by many different events. Her father died when she was young; her mother raised Julie and her younger sister, Heather, in a small, stifling Mississippi town which Julie couldn't wait to leave. When Julie left for medical school in San Francisco, she felt bad about leaving her needy sister, but she needed to reinvent herself and start her future. Heather drifted from boyfriend to boyfriend, place to place, problem to problem, and came in and out of Julie's life.Julie met Tom, a radio disc jockey, and the two fell deeply in love. And when an unexpected incident surprises them and transforms their lives, they are truly happy. Until Heather re-enters their lives, and everything falls apart in her wake, including, little by little, Julie and Tom's marriage. Heather leaves to join the Army, and the two sisters stop speaking completely for several years."I understand now how families become estranged, not by design but by embarrassment. You come to a point when so much time has passed that it seems impossible to make the first move."Heather's return throws Julie into upheaval once again, and wreaks havoc with what is left of her relationship with Tom, especially once Heather reveals her pregnancy. Yet Julie agrees to deliver Heather's baby, and the day she goes into labor turns out to be one fraught with chaos—for Julie, for the possibility of a future with Tom, for the entire state of California. Julie faces a shocking crisis which forces her to re-evaluate everything in her life, including her relationships.Golden State is tremendously compelling, thought-provoking, emotional, and very engaging. Michelle Richmond hooks you quite quickly into Julie's life and the crises she faces, as the book follows the course of one day, with occasional reminiscences of other times in Julie's life. It's a fascinating exploration about the ties and the loyalties of our relationships, those we're born into and those we choose."Between a marriage one chooses and a blood relation one doesn't, shouldn't marriage be the more powerful bond?"I enjoyed Golden State a great deal. I really liked the complexity of both Julie and Tom's characters, compelled both by what has happened and what remains unsaid. I'll admit, however, while the major incident that drives much of the plot and forces Julie to reminisce certainly is a driver of the story, I felt as if it was almost superfluous; I thought Julie's story and her relationships with her sister and her husband could have stood on their own. But it didn't detract from the power of the story.If you see any of the reviews or publicity around this book, it's recommended for fans of Jodi Picoult or Jacquelyn Mitchard. I worried a little bit that this book would be one of the ripped-from-the-headlines-type stories Picoult is well known for, but fortunately (in my opinion), this wasn't that way at all. It's just a well-written and well-told story that definitely makes you think how you'd react in similar situations.

Lots of twist and turns! True review of San Francisco and characters. Would make great streaming series or TV drama.

It's hard to put a rating on this novel. It's told in the first person by Julie, a doctor who has lost her child and is going through a marriage crisis. At the same time, there are riots in her state of California as its citizens vote to secede from the rest of America (a bit of a dubious plot, that one). Julie's narrative flits to and fro: in the past, in the present, and on the morning of the present, each time revealing snippets for the reader to add to the puzzle until eventually the whole story is revealed. For example, we don't find out who Ethan is exactly and how his parents lost him until quite a way into the book. Nor do we get much feedback on Dennis, a mentally unstable hostage taker, until the end of the book. And yet he is meant to be a significant player in Julie's past life. This slow unfolding of the story made it intriguing to a point, which I'm sure is how the author, Michelle Richmond, meant it to be. But the very slow unravelling of the story and the constant chopping from past to present was frustratingly overdone and I found myself fuddling through some of the first half of the book. What I did like about the book, though, was how the author dealt with its many themes - family relationships, loss, anger, divorce, forgiveness, belief, identity, human value, etc. Richmond broached these topics with a philosophical freshness and intelligence and that kept the story and its characters passably interesting. I would give it 3 stars for its clumsy, frustrating attempt at mystery by switching from past to present constantly, and 5 stars for its portrayal of people. Like most of its characters, the novel was flawed but still basically good.

Golden StateByMichelle RichmondWhat it's all about...Tom. Julie, Dennis, Heather, Ethan...all names of characters who play a key role in this book. Every character in this book seems to be going through a crisis that comes at a time when California wanted to secede. Julie is going through a personal crisis along with the state crisis and a hostage crisis. Whew!My thoughts after reading this book...This is one of those amazing yet maddening books that begins with a mystery...well...a puzzle. Hints are given and the more I read the more I could not stop reading. This kind of writing has always been addictive for me...I am forever nodding and saying to myself...ah...yes...now I see.Without giving away too much...Julie is injured yet working her way to her sister...who is about to have a baby in a cheap VA hotel. I had to keep checking times and dates while I read just to be certain of the progression of events. She hasn't seen her sister in years but they are building back their relationship. Their relationship was shattered years ago and it has to do with a little boy named Ethan. Julie is a physician at the VA hospital and a man who is mentally ill has taken some of her colleagues hostage...in Julie's office. This man is Dennis and he has been infatuated with Julie for years.I think that's probably all that I can share. These relationships that everyone has with each other become more and more clear with each chapter. And...the situations become incredibly tense.What I loved best...I loved this book. This author has a gripping yet relaxed way of telling this story that is just so pure and believable. I loved everything about this book. It has a ton of sadness to it that was so heartbreaking and yet I still loved reading about all of it.My ending thoughts for potential readers...If you are a reader who loves to get lost in a book...this is the book for you. This book has flawed characters and tense situations with an outcome that was perfection.

I really enjoyed this novel, the bond between the sisters who were both strong characters was well told. As a Brit with a son living in CA I'm surprised that I hadn't heard about the secession movement, I thought that the civil war had brought all the states together.

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. Really well written and I'll be look for more by this author.

I bought this and could hardly wait to read it, as I would put No One You Know and The Year of Fog in my top ten all time books. Although it is as always an interesting read, it doesn't match up to those two. There's a lot of chopping and changing between present day, a story a few years ago and a childhood history, and while I could follow it all and it added some tension I also found it quite frustrating as I got into one story and then turned a page and it all stopped again. I also didn't think that the underlying plot about the election brought an awful lot to the story. It's still worth reading, but I guess I felt a little disappointed that it didn't quite match up to my expectations - maybe I'll enjoy it more when I re-read it.