Time's Mouth A Novel

What if you could go back in time and investigate your family’s secrets? Would it make things better? Would it make you better? Or worse? A page-turning family story of an all-female commune deep in the Santa Cruz woods—and the secret powers some of the women there hold—by New York Times bestselling author Edan Lepucki, the queen of California dystopian magic “Edan Lepucki’s new novel is an astonishing achievement. Written in crystalline prose that is as wise as it is witty, Time’s Mouth left me breathless with admiration.” —DAN CHAON, author of Sleepwalk Ursa possesses a very special gift. She can travel through memory and revisit her past. After she flees her hometown for the counterculture glory of 1950s California, the intoxicating potential of her unique ability eventually draws a group of women into her orbit and into a mansion in the woods outside Santa Cruz. Yet Ursa’s powers come with a cost. Soon this cultish community of sisterhood takes an ominous turn, prompting her son, Ray, and his pregnant lover, Cherry, to flee to Los Angeles and reinvent themselves far from Ursa’s insidious influence. But escaping their past won’t be so easy when a series of mysterious events forces Cherry to abandon their baby, leaving Ray to raise Opal alone. Now a teenager and still heartbroken over the abandonment of the mother she never knew, Opal must journey into her own past to reveal the generations of secrets that gave rise to the shimmering source of her family’s painful legacy. From the forests of Santa Cruz to the 1980s glam of Melrose Avenue to a solitary estate among the oil derricks off La Cienega Boulevard, Time’s Mouth is an enthralling saga about family secrets that grow more powerful with time, set against the magical, dangerous landscape of California.