With an open heart and a willingness to forgive, you can go home again.
Driven to the edge by the dissolution of her marriage, the foreclosure of her Nob Hill penthouse, and the bankruptcy of her business, fifty-year-old Clara Russell is left with no money and no resources in THE AVENUE A Novel. Reeling from betrayal, she secretly withdraws to the deserted studio of her father—whom she believes is dead. The neglected corner sits on the sprawling estate of her 90-year-old estranged mother of 30 years. Locked behind a hidden gate on a dead-end avenue in the middle of a decaying surf-town neighborhood, Clara schemes for way out before her mother or her ex-husband’s loan sharks discover her.
A Mysterious Stranger
Like so many others during the 2009 depression, Clara quickly learns just how difficult mere survival is. A dangerous drug house, characters living in abandoned cars lining the avenue of more boarded-up houses than lived-in, and a mysterious stranger steer Clara into a yearlong journey of self-discovery and forgiveness.
Surfing and Urban Gardening
The heart of the story rests in the expanse of the Monterey Bay where Clara’s father took her surfing as kid. Her counterpoint is a seemingly dead garden separating her father’s studio from her mother’s house. Battling drug dealers as she battles her own demons, Clara works to restore the garden shut away for nearly three decades. Between the watery realm of the bay and the earth that grounds and gives life, Clara braves each barrier on the path to discovery. The changes she brings as she transforms the weed-choked and garbage-strewn parkland to life as a vegetable garden to feed many slowly reflect in the avenue’s outer alterations and the inner transformation she undergoes.
A dark, grown-up version of the children’s story The Secret Garden
collides with a dangerous drug gang on an avenue of boarded-up houses
in the middle of a decaying surf-town neighborhood
as a mysterious stranger steers Clara into
a yearlong journey of self-discovery and forgiveness in
#surfing, #redemption, #beachlife, #2009Recession #forgiveness #drugs #addiction #art #urbanvegetablegarden #Vietnamvets
THE AVENUE A Novel
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