January 29, 2024
Stark debuts with an emotionally charged portrait of two women’s painful family histories and their uneasy reunion in California’s Inland Empire. Tessa Jenson, pregnant with her third child at 27 and struggling to raise two rambunctious young children, runs into her high school friend and lover, Mel, who’s recently returned to town after a decade away. At 16, the girls were broken up by Mel’s mother, who disapproved of their relationship, though it’s Mel whom Tessa feels bitter toward. Now, the women attempt to renew their friendship, which adds to the ongoing tension in Tessa’s marriage with Henry, who knows how much she loved Mel as a girl and whose own mother’s constant presence makes it difficult for Tessa to find her bearings as a parent. Exacerbating those challenges are Tessa’s memories of postpartum depression following her first daughter’s birth, which are triggered by her pregnancy and had to do with her feelings about her own mother. In vivid flashbacks, Stark gradually doles out details of the physical and sexual abuse Tessa and her late mother endured at the hands of her stepfather and his son, deepening the well-developed theme of strained mother-daughter relationships. Fans of Dorothy Allison or Pam Houston ought to seek this out. Agent: Stephanie Cabot, Susanna Lea Assoc.
February 15, 2024
It's 1999, and Tessa is about to have her third child with her husband, Henry. They live in Perris, California, in a trailer on land owned by Henry's mom, Angie, who has been selling pieces of the former cattle ranch to keep the family afloat. One afternoon, Tessa runs into her former best friend-turned-girlfriend, Mel, at the drugstore. Mel and Tessa were inseparable a decade ago, before Mel's mother discovered them together and sent Mel away. Mel's return, timed with Tessa's pregnancy, pushes Tessa to remember the darkest times of her life: the years after her mother left her with an abusive stepfather and stepbrother. As Tessa prepares for her baby's arrival, she feels trapped in the life she has built and veers toward a breaking point. The characters in Stark's debut novel illustrate the contradictions of their surroundings. They're isolated but have no personal space, scraping by but deeply connected to the land. As chapters move between the 1980s and 1990s, Perris, California tells a story about resilience, motherhood, and promises we make.
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Starred review from February 1, 2024
Tessa is 27 years old and pregnant with her third child when she runs into her first love, a woman named Mel, and begins to question the life she has built. Living in a trailer with her husband, Henry, and their children, Preston and Ruby, Tessa feels increasingly smothered by her mother-in-law, Angie, on whose land they reside. Mel's return prompts Tessa to revisit her youth; graphic flashbacks reveal her mother's abandonment and the harrowing abuse she suffered at the hands of her stepfather and stepbrother. (Stark's depiction of those abuses never strays into trauma porn.) The respite Mel's love offered teenage Tessa was cruelly taken away when Mel left suddenly and Tessa was forced to draw on previously unknown strength to survive. This indirectly leads her into the lives of Henry and Angie and a future filled with love. Adult Tessa's emotional withdrawal from family life exemplifies how trauma can trigger self-sabotage, secrecy, the turning away from those who love us, and the fight-or-flight instinct. The theme of motherhood underpins the novel, specifically the synchronous fragility and resilience of mothers and the hurts done to and by mothers. Caregiving is represented as at once claustrophobic and a source of deep joy: "Honey, tired ain't something women like you and me get to be. Looking after is what I was built for." In Tessa and Angie's relationship, Stark captures female solidarity, a shared maternal understanding, and the sacredness of keeping each other's secrets. As Mel's presence forces Tessa to confront the vast kaleidoscope of her own personhood, the many selves she has inhabited throughout her life, Tessa accepts that she must make peace with what might have been. This agonizingly sad novel nevertheless rejoices in small acts of loving. When Angie observes that "each other is the whole of what we've got," Stark offers up a balm to soothe not only Tessa's hurt, but the reader's. An extraordinary debut that insists that we can--and must--mend each other.
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