book review: The Last Days of California by Mary Miller
The backstory: The Last Days of California is Mary Miller's debut novel. The basics: Jess is fifteen and on a road trip from Montgomery, Alabama with her pregnant seventeen-year-old sister Elise, her evangelical father, and her mother. The family is heading to California because the rapture is coming in a matter of days. My thoughts: The thought of being fifteen on a road trip with my older sister and parents is enough to make me feel claustrophobic in reminiscence (I'm sort of kidding--I don't have an older sister.) It's not a situation I would necessarily choose to immerse myself in, but from the moment I started The Last Days of California , I was hooked and didn't want to leave this journey. Miller is an intriguing writer. This novel has dark humor in some unexpected places: "Molly Ringwald was never pretty enough to be a leading lady, but the eighties were a dream world in which the captain of the football team would leave the homecoming queen for...