For Jackie Pierce, everything changed the summer of 1979, when she spent three months of infinite freedom at her bohemian uncle’s sprawling estate on the California coast.
The filmy past and unfinished business are novelist Amy Mason Doan’s recurring subjects, and in Lady Sunshine, those themes emerge like sea glass: pretty and inviting, all sharpness smoothed away ... Doan is strongest in the flashback sections, where she moves the well-paced action between scenes of group life and the intensely private friendship that develops between Jackie and her cousin, Willa. Willa is sensitively drawn, a girl at home in the woods who sees — and hides — secrets ... From inspiration to publication, music and nostalgia make Lady Sunshine a feel-good book, and who at this moment doesn’t crave a little comfort?
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 paints Jackie as a sympathetic, heartwarming narrator facing an introspective journey she never anticipated.
