Bookshelf

Alumni and faculty members who would like to have their books considered for this listing should contact Stacey Himmelberger, editor of Hamilton magazine. This list, which dates back to 2018, is updated periodically with books appearing alphabetically on the date of entry.

The Golden State: A Novel by Lydia Kiesling ’05

July 1, 2021

Tags Alumni Book

(New York: MCD, 2018).
The author’s debut novel, The Golden State has received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly and been longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. The book chronicles 10 days in the life of a young woman named Daphne, who feels trapped in a mundane job and in the role of a single parent after her Turkish husband is denied reentry in to U.S. due of a “processing error.” On the verge of a breakdown, she packs up the car, toddler in tow, and heads to the remote desert town of Altavista where they find refuge in a mobile home left to Daphne by her grandparents.

One reviewer noted, “Keenly observed, bristling with humor, and set against the beauty of a little-known part of California, The Golden State is about class and cultural breakdowns, and desperate attempts to bridge old and new worlds. But more than anything, it is about motherhood: its voracious worry, frequent tedium, and enthralling, wondrous love.”

Kiesling is editor of the online magazine The Millions. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Slate, and The New Yorker online, and have been recognized in The Best American Essays 2016.