California Golden
“Never fall in love with someone who doesn’t need you,” the father of preteens Mindy and Ginger Donnelly tells them in 1957 as he abandons the family. Their mother, Carol, is a pioneering woman surfer and a neglectful parent, preferring being on the beach to domestic life, leaving the girls to sometimes go hungry and worry that she will also leave them. Mindy and Ginger try everything they can think of to please her, including learning to surf. They are successful enough by their teens to be cast as movie extras and stunt surfers for the “beach party” films in the early 1960s. Mindy is the better surfer, winning competitions and known as “the girl in the curl” who gets to hang out with VIPs in the hottest nightclubs. Ginger falls into the orbit of beach bum/drug dealer Tom, living in bohemian conditions in a beach shack. Mindy learns that being semi-famous has its price: her agent tells her she must choose between her celebrity and dating Jimmy Cho, a Hawaiian surfer who appears Black when photographed, in an era when mixed-race couples were taboo.
I was slightly annoyed with the story structure, which jumps around in time between the late ´50s and ´60s, sometimes leaving me wondering where on the timeline a particular chapter fell. But a little patience was rewarded; the characters and situation grew on me. Benjamin’s afterword says that she’s never surfed herself, yet she is successful in bringing the 1960s California sun-sand-surf world to life, with memorable characters. I cared about Mindy and Ginger even as they made questionable choices. Carol’s backstory is not revealed until late in the book, which makes her appear villainous for most of it. Benjamin’s skill in depicting a dysfunctional family which readers can still identify with is exemplary. Recommended.
