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Lydia Kiesling

Biography

Lydia Kiesling

Lydia Kiesling is the editor of The Millions. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Slate and The New Yorker online, and they have been recognized in THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 2016. She lives in San Francisco with her family. THE GOLDEN STATE is her first novel.

Lydia Kiesling

Books by Lydia Kiesling

by Lydia Kiesling - Fiction, Women's Fiction

Daphne flees her sensible but strained life in San Francisco for the high desert of Altavista with her toddler. Bucking under the weight of being a single parent, she takes refuge in a mobile home left to her by her grandparents. Over the next 10 days, Daphne wanders the town looking for anyone and anything to punctuate the long hours alone with the baby. Among others, she meets Cindy, a neighbor who is active in a secessionist movement, and befriends the elderly Alice, who has traveled to Altavista as she approaches the end of her life. When her relationships with these women culminate in a dangerous standoff, Daphne must reconcile her inner narrative with the reality of a deeply divided world.