"Pasadena"

David Ebershoff is the author of the short story collection, The Rose City, and two bestselling novels, Pasadena and The Danish Girl.

David applied the "page 69 test" to Pasadena and reported the following:

I finished editing Pasadena in early 2002. Although I’ve read pieces of it since – typically the Prologue and Chapter 1 – I doubt I’ve looked at p. 69 since I signed off on the first-pass pages and sent them to the compositor nearly five years ago. So now, opening up the book, I had no idea what I’d find there. How far into the story had I taken my characters? Was this page a tiresome digression I wished now I could cut? Well, look at this: oddly, cosmically, p. 69 represents the novel’s dynamics as well as any could. Here we have the strange love triangle that will determine all that is to come: Linda, her brother Edmund, and the sullen stranger, Bruder, who somehow emerged from the battlefields of World War I and ended up on this remote California farm, Condor’s Nest. And here we have the early frisson between Linda and Bruder, the muffled desire, the affection, the teasing, the envy, even the hatred. These two are doomed to love and hate each other, and on p. 69 the reader and I can see it begin to play out in their hearts.

Read an excerpt from Pasadena.

Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Series.