"The California Dreamers"

Amy Mason Doan is the bestselling author of The Summer List, Summer Hours, Lady Sunshine, and The California Dreamers. She earned a BA in English from UC Berkeley and an MA in journalism from Stanford University, and has written for The Oregonian, San Francisco Chronicle, and Forbes, among other publications. She grew up in Danville, California, and now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her family.

She applied the Page 69 Test to The California Dreamers and reported the following:

Page 69 of The California Dreamers distills my novel’s plot and tension into one page quite nicely! The book is about Ronan, the only girl growing up in a surf-van family on the West Coast in the 80s. She leaves their off- the-grid lifestyle for mysterious reasons at 17, but then 15 years later, she reunites with her three brothers and her mother for her father’s memorial service on an island.

On page 69, we’re on a beach near San Diego in the past thread of the story:

The twins and I decide not to tell Cap about the photographer. He only got Charlie close up, really, and now he’s gone. And we don’t want anything to spoil Charlie and Bass’s last night.

Since the Merrick family is fiercely private, their father, Cap, forbids photographs of them. He’s been known to throw cameras in the water or rip film out, ruining it. But today a new friend about Ronan’s age, Charlie, horsed around in front of a photographer on the beach, attracting attention. The family is allowed to socialize with Charlie because her father is a fellow vanner that they trust, but she doesn’t know their rules...and the siblings have broken a huge one in not telling their father what happened earlier on the beach.

When a photograph of the family “goes viral,” to use today’s term, it threatens their way of life. But nobody knows who the photographer is. Was it the one from this day? Or someone else entirely?

It’s one of the central mysteries of the book.

The photograph also brings the family together at the end. But in this early scene, where the siblings are young teens and they don’t know what life has in store for them, they’d never envision that a single photograph could so upend their lives and also provide healing – if they’ll let it.

The next paragraph captures the joy of their life, their attachment to nature and ethos of living simply, and the special thrill of having two guests for their dinner on the beach:

Mama and I make abalone stew, and potatoes with wild rosemary we picked this morning, zucchini pancakes, towers of them, plums, spiced walnuts, and our big glass jug of sun tea, which we’ve been tending to all day, moving it around the road like a sundial so it never felt shade. With a sweet laugh at herself, Mama adds sprigs of mint to each cup.

She likes company as much as being alone, I think.

At least this company. At least once in a while...

Here we get a good sense of Mama’s character – secretive, floaty, withholding – and also of our protagonist’s. Ronan, or Ro, tries to figure people out. She’s softhearted, clever, and passionate. Cameras are forbidden, but she takes mental pictures whenever she can, and her observations are shrewd even if she’s had no formal education and her world is small.

The Page 69 Test works perfectly in this case...but of course I hope people will read the entire book!

Visit Amy Mason Doan's website.

The Page 69 Test: Summer Hours.

My Book, The Movie: Lady Sunshine.

--Marshal Zeringue