describes tales of the dark side of the American dream. The stories are typically set around Los Angeles in the early 1900’s when a veneer of front-page optimism whitewashed the corruption that shattered lives on boulevards of broken dreams.
A story of one city, two families, three valleys, and a man who decided to play God.
D.J. Phinney’s Angeltown is a sweeping saga pitting the corruption of media and self-serving politicians against the plight of the working class during the California water wars of the early 20th Century.
Descendants of a Mexican governor of California, the Alvarado family members have fallen upon hard times. Linda is maimed by molten lead in a Los Angeles Times sweatshop and ejected from the building without so much as first aid. Then her path crosses that of Fred Eaton, L.A.’s disgraced former mayor, a recovering alcoholic, and the intrigue begins.
The power brokers of Los Angeles know the city cannot grow without water, and their fortunes rest on being able to access it. Driven by self-interest, they will do whatever it takes to secure water. What ensues is a battle between the haves and the have-nots, between the entrenched politicians, media, and businessmen and the people just seeking to survive, that shaped the future of California.
The corruption of media and self-serving politicians pitted against the plight of the working class make this story timeless and compelling. That it is an impeccably-researched window into the history of not just politics but also of water in California – a resource still being used to control the population of that state today – makes it relevant. This is the first book of a trilogy.
From Mulholland to Eaton to Otis, Phinney brings historical characters to life, reminding readers that while times and technology may change, the forces that drive human beings do not.
A 1971 “LOVE STORY” FOR THE REST OF US
When the largest girl in high school befriends an awkward senior boy, both become the butt of high school ridicule. And then they find something in each other that will change their lives forever.
WHAT IF LOVE REALLY MEANS THAT SOMETIMES WE HAVE TO SAY WE’RE SORRY?
Fifty years ago, while young Americans were dying in Vietnam, the hit movie Love Story served up a paradigm for those too good to serve. Its logline, “Love means you never have to say you’re sorry,” befits a high school where many students’ middle name seems to be “privileged”, and the rest are often the object of ridicule or distain. Allen Martin is convinced that the movie quote’s a total crock and that he will be shipped to Vietnam after he graduates, rendering both his present and his future bleak.
A hike with outcast Mandy Richert surprises Allen when she offers him exactly what he needs if he finds courage to befriend her: unconditional acceptance, support, and understanding. Their awkward friendship blossoms in their final months of high school. Mandy wants to be a nun. Allen fears he’s going to die. But for the moment, during one shining, unforgettable senior year, Allen Martin and Mandy Richert have each other.
A coming-of-age novel, The Society for the Complete Extermination of Ethan Frome mirrors our current age of privilege and shaming. Journey back a half a century to a not-so-sunny Southern California reminiscent of the way it really was.
The Cigarette Girl on the Tango, D. J. Phinney’s follow-up to The Anaheim Beauties Valencia Queen, unveils another hushed-up chapter of California history. In the depths of the Great Depression, the Santa Ana River floods of 1938 roar through Orange County, destroying, Atwood, a river-edge bracero hamlet. 19-year-old Willie O’Toole searches for his missing love, Elena Valenzuela, almost certain she has drowned. At a tamale shop near the western edge of rural Santa Ana, he meets Loretta, who looks exactly like Elena without her innocence. She claims to be Elena’s sister. But some facts aren’t adding up. Then Willie learns Elena’s corpse washed up onshore at Seal Beach, then called “Sin City”, the red-light district and gambling mecca of Orange County. He follows Elena’s trail to the gambling ships offshore. There, Willie’s horrified to learn his love, Elena, didn’t drown and that Loretta isn’t who she claimed to be. Steeped in more true but hidden history, once more the story echoes the present and strips the makeup off our candy-coated past. Enjoy a journey to a California few people remember, where a thin veneer of innocence masked an underworld of lies.
takes readers back a century, to a time when the country was recovering from WWI, orange groves dominated southern California, Hollywood was a mecca for beautiful young women, and the Klan seemed to stand for God, family, country, and the American Way – or did it?
Human nature is a constant. The need to belong, to be appreciated, to feel recognized drives us, and when it is missing, we can be easily seduced by people and organizations offering it to us. Taking place in post WWI southern California, the often riveting, always multilayered story of THE ANAHEIM BEAUTIES VALENCIA QUEEN is a coming-of-age novel which proves that then, as now, validation rackets existed, seducing the lonely, the disenfranchised, the insecure, and the self-conscious, providing them with a sense of fitting in while luring them into behaviors beyond the pale.
With stealth, in 1924 the Ku Klux Klan took over Anaheim’s city council plus ten of eleven slots on the police force. In a Roaring 20’s citrus-packing suburb of 10,000 people, where the ethics of Jay Gatsby collide with those of Elmer Gantry, an aspiring high school pitching phenom, fatherless Dean Reynolds, falls under the spell of drop-dead-gorgeous Helen Webber and her agenda-driven, rich father.
But Helen, whose face graces orange crate labels shipped around the world, is using Dean as local arm-candy while sleeping her way through Hollywood casting couches. Her father and his “connections” all turn out to be Klansmen. After a shadowy motorcar accident kills a teammate on Dean’s prom night, Dean has no one safe to turn to. But the Klan is there to “help”.
Steeped in little-known California history, the story gives us characters whose problems, moral dilemmas, strengths and weaknesses are as relevant today as they were in 1924. Yesterday meets today in this provocative coming-of-age historical novel.
FULLERTON, CALIFORNIA: SEPTEMBER 18, 1968 It’s him, as sure as Hades, in her section of the Denny’s: Victor Malone, the boy she’d slept with in September, 1950. Ginny’d met him at The Pike, in uniform, in line behind her, clutching a quarter in his fist to take four snapshots in their photo booth. He’d been […]
