California Dreaming: A Novel

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Having grown up on stories of her mothers wild youth in California, Elena Berg relocates from New England to the Bay Area in 2011 for a placement as an English teacher with Teach for America. Among her diverse but underprivileged students, she is eager to inspire a love of poetry and literature. Her own grandfathera Holocaust survivorwas a storyteller, and he went on to become a teacher who touched the lives of his students for years to come. Elenas mother followed in his footsteps, leaving behind the hippie lifestyle of her twenties to become a university professor.

But Elena quickly finds herself feeling disconnected from teaching, unable to inspire her students, and before long, she grows disillusioned with her career. She transitions to a role in an education technology startup, though she questions her decision, her motivations, and her values.

Coming of age between the Occupy and Me Too movements, against the backdrop of the 2016 election and Californias ever-worsening fire season, Elena reckons with California as she imagined it and California as it really is. As she does so, she must also ultimately reconcile the person she envisioned herself to be and the person she actually is.

Reviews

"A splendid debut novel--confessional, engaging, honest. I very much look forward to reading more from this writer."
--Lynn Freed, author of The Romance of Elsewhere

Author Bio

Noa Silver was born in Jerusalem and raised between Scotland and Maine. After receiving her BA in English and American literature and language from Harvard University, Noa lived and taught English as a Second Language on Namdrik--part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the smallest inhabited atoll in the world. She later completed her MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University and then worked as an editor on various oral history projects, ranging from an archive documenting the Partition of India and Pakistan to a cancer researcher telling the stories of trauma experienced by cancer survivors. Noa lives in Berkeley, California, with her husband, Jack, and their two daughters, Alma and Leila.