As a gift from the library universe, my library hold for Wonder Valley by Ivy Pochoda became available during the December holidays, and I had downtime to spend reading. The book opens with a man running naked through rush hour traffic in downtown Los Angeles, drawing police and television reporters in hot pursuit. I thought, this book has potential to show what we're living with here in LA.
Multiple characters whose lives are interwoven represent different parts of Southern California society: the seekers in the desert, the destitute on Skid Row, and the self-absorbed from the Westside. Just as when Angelinos discover that the subject of a newspaper story is a co-worker's cousin, or the middle school music teacher who used to play with a famous pop band, Wonder Valley's characters come to learn of the connections that bind them together, even as those connections might be deadly.
Pochoda further segments the narrative into two time streams: 2006 in the high desert community of Wonder Valley and 2010 in the City of Los Angeles. In 2006, a self-awareness commune explores truth and spiritual enlightenment, only to come into conflict when the commune is compromised by both inside rebellion and vile trespassers. In 2010, the loose ends remaining from the demise of the Wonder Valley community knit back together on Los Angeles' Skid Row and other downtown neighborhoods.
It takes some effort on behalf of the reader, which is richly rewarded, to follow the many characters’ stories across the two time settings, but transformation is the common theme. Characters organize around spiritual beliefs, criminal pursuits, family love, and none of the circumstances endures, nor are they meant to. Settlements in Wonder Valley or on Skid Row are not permanent. Relationships in the high desert and westward prove to be conditional and transactional, even when lives are at stake.
When I first heard of the book, Wonder Valley, I thought, ok, another book about Southern California by an East Coast writer. It will have the usual cliches of dreams pursued then dashed, an ugly duckling blooms into an elegant swan, a teenage outcast is transformed into the creator of the next tech unicorn. Class, ethnic and race differences will be explored, contrasted, and in some small closing scene, reconciled in a manner that eases the general social discomfort that arose as the differences were exposed. Wonder Valley is satisfyingly fresh even as the LA neighborhood settings are familiar. After finishing the book, I wanted to learn how Pochoda could so clearly portray our Los Angeles people without reaching for cliches. I read that she had spent some years here in the city, and the final answer came by turning back to the book’s dedication page: To the writers and artists in the LAMP Arts Program, a Skid Row “housing first” community