Brenda Lockhart’s family has been living well beyond their means for too long when Brenda’s husband leaves them—for an older and less attractive woman than Brenda, no less. Brenda’s never worked outside the home, and the family’s economic situation quickly declines. Oldest daughter Peggy is certain she’s heading off to a university, until her father offers her a job sorting mail while she attends community college instead. Younger daughter Allison, a high school senior, can’t believe her luck that California golden boy Kevin has fallen in love with her.
Meanwhile, the chatter about the O. J. Simpson murder investigations is always on in the background, a media frenzy that underscores domestic violence against women and race and class divisions in Southern California. Brenda, increasingly obsessed with the case, is convinced O. J. is innocent and has been framed by the LAPD. Both daughters are more interested in their own lives—that is, until Peggy starts noticing bruises Allison can’t explain. For a while, it feels to everyone as if the family is falling apart; but in the end, they all come together again in unexpected ways.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Meanwhile, the chatter about the O. J. Simpson murder investigations is always on in the background, a media frenzy that underscores domestic violence against women and race and class divisions in Southern California. Brenda, increasingly obsessed with the case, is convinced O. J. is innocent and has been framed by the LAPD. Both daughters are more interested in their own lives—that is, until Peggy starts noticing bruises Allison can’t explain. For a while, it feels to everyone as if the family is falling apart; but in the end, they all come together again in unexpected ways.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Camarillo’s prose is lively, companionable, and quite satisfyingly observant in ways that surprise and delight, as if a friendly someone you know well is murmuring in your ear, giving you living presences, using history as the canvas across which the drama takes place. Bravo!" - Richard Bausch
"Like Mona Simpson’s Anywhere but Here, The Lockhart Women sensitively illustrates what happens to children coming of age under the influence of childish parents. But unlike Simpson, Camarillo provides hope that everyone-parents and children-can grow and develop. An authentically hopeful and realistic novel." - Shelley Blanton-Stroud
". . . an intimate portrayal of a Southern California working class family that splinters apart when the father leaves. Brenda Lockhart and her two daughters are complicated and not always admirable characters, but they are relentlessly human. Camarillo laces their story with concise prose, dry humor, and flinty realism, allowing love, resilience, hope and eventual forgiveness to shine through." - Samantha Dunn
"With control, compassion, and surprising humor, Camarillo dissects how a modern family comes apart. . . . Unputdownable." - Eduardo Santiago
"The Lockhart Women is deeply and thoroughly Southern Californian-in all the perfectly detailed cities and streets and, of course, freeways, but also in the evocation of its time: the 1990s. These women in this page turner-flawed and desperate and seeking redemption-are vivid portraits." - Susan Straight
"O. J.’s famous white Bronco flight and his trial for murder is the perfect backdrop for this story of a mother and her two daughters watching their lives implode. Great writing, compelling and fast-paced, The Lockhart Women is impossible to put down." - Diana Wagman
"Like Mona Simpson’s Anywhere but Here, The Lockhart Women sensitively illustrates what happens to children coming of age under the influence of childish parents. But unlike Simpson, Camarillo provides hope that everyone-parents and children-can grow and develop. An authentically hopeful and realistic novel." - Shelley Blanton-Stroud
". . . an intimate portrayal of a Southern California working class family that splinters apart when the father leaves. Brenda Lockhart and her two daughters are complicated and not always admirable characters, but they are relentlessly human. Camarillo laces their story with concise prose, dry humor, and flinty realism, allowing love, resilience, hope and eventual forgiveness to shine through." - Samantha Dunn
"With control, compassion, and surprising humor, Camarillo dissects how a modern family comes apart. . . . Unputdownable." - Eduardo Santiago
"The Lockhart Women is deeply and thoroughly Southern Californian-in all the perfectly detailed cities and streets and, of course, freeways, but also in the evocation of its time: the 1990s. These women in this page turner-flawed and desperate and seeking redemption-are vivid portraits." - Susan Straight
"O. J.’s famous white Bronco flight and his trial for murder is the perfect backdrop for this story of a mother and her two daughters watching their lives implode. Great writing, compelling and fast-paced, The Lockhart Women is impossible to put down." - Diana Wagman
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