Lady Sunshine

April 15, 2021
After she unexpectedly inherits a remote Northern California coastal estate that once belonged to her musician uncle, a woman in her late 30s must make peace with the memories of her lost family. In the summer of 1979, Jackie is an angry teenager. She hates her private school, the fellow students who call her Supertramp, her father's new wife, and the fact that her new stepmother is besotted with purchasing everything for her in various cheerful shades of yellow. When her father and stepmother decide on a belated summerlong European honeymoon, Jackie makes a push to stay with her uncle Graham, Aunt Angela, and cousin Willa at the Sandcastle, their rambling Northern California estate, where musicians and their families come and go. Once she arrives, she realizes that her godlike uncle, a once-famous folk musician, is the sun around which all the people in his life orbit. In 1999, Jackie is once again at the estate, clearing out the house and its many cabins after unexpectedly inheriting it from her aunt. No longer angry, Jackie is an elementary school music teacher in Boston. She's devoted to her students, but she's walled herself off emotionally from everyone else, including her fiance, Paul. Much like that idyllic summer of 1979, in the summer of '99, the estate is full of musicians and people and laughter, as music producer Shane Ingram, a friend of Angela's, records a new album of Graham's unpublished work in his legendary basement studio. Author Doan has created a story that is half set in each world as Jackie clears out the house for sale in 1999 while working through her memories of the one idyllic summer she spent drenched in love, happiness, and sunlight before everything went very wrong. Doan's descriptions of the rugged landscape in Humboldt County create a visually rich backdrop for her characters to inhabit. A well-written, well-paced novel that unfolds slowly, hinting at the events that broke apart a young woman's life.

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April 15, 2021
Jacqueline Pierce knew her folk musician uncle hosted bacchanalian gatherings full of weed, wine, and musicianship on his sprawling coastal California estate in the seventies, but she didn't expect to feel the legacy of his music so powerfully after all these years. When Jackie inherits the old estate, her first impulse is to quickly clear it of all personal effects and sell it to the highest bidder. She surprises herself by allowing a small group of musicians to record a tribute album there first. As Jackie cleans, sorts, and organizes, she drifts back in time to the last summer she spent on the estate. At 17, Jackie thought she and her cousin, Willa, had their whole lives ahead of them. Today, Jackie wonders what she has left. Fans of Crossing California and Daisy Jones and the Six will be enamored with the world of Lady Sunshine, flipping between the estate's heyday and the continued allure of fame. Doan (Summer Hours, 2019) paints Jackie as a sympathetic, heartwarming narrator facing an introspective journey she never anticipated.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

December 1, 2021

Doan has shaped two main characters in two different time periods. In 1999, Jackie returns to her uncle's home to pack it up and sell after the death of her aunt, who was the last person alive in their immediate family. Jackie spends the summer in the home reliving her time as a teen there in the 1970s. She and her cousin, Willa, were the same age and became close friends back then. On first sight, this novel might seem like other flashback-in-time stories, but readers are in for quite a surprise because this story twists and turns through the 20-year journey to enlighten the older Jackie as well as reveal key secrets and misunderstandings that have haunted her for decades. The characters are flawed but likable and genuine. VERDICT Readers of realistic fiction and suspense will not be able to put the book down after they realize the mystery that must be unraveled for Jackie and Willa to find peace.-April Sanders, Texas A&M Commerce, TX

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