Acknowledgments
I am deeply grateful to the following for their help with this book.
Thanks to Jennifer Gilmore and Kyoko Uchida for their early and insightful readings.
Thanks to Johnny Temple, Johanna Ingalls, Ibrahim Ahmad, Aaron Petrovich, and everyone else at Akashic Books for taking on another of my novels.
Thanks to Richard Parks, Monica Valencia, and Hugh Evans for their specific and expert help.
Thanks to the friends who’ve accompanied me on trips into the wilderness. And love to two big-spirited men who’ve been called home to the mountains.
Thanks to the dogs: Russell, the English springer spaniel, for his spirit and companionship; and Ariat, the border collie, for choosing our cabin.
And finally, my love and gratitude to Felicia Luna Lemus—for her caring attention to this book and our lives, and for always walking beside me.
NINA REVOYR is the author of four previous novels, including The Age of Dreaming, which was nominated for the LA Times Book Prize; Southland, a Los Angeles Times best seller and “Best Book” of 2003; and Wingshooters, which won an Indie Booksellers’ Choice Award and was selected by O, The Oprah Magazine as one of “10 Titles to Pick Up Now.” Revoyr lives and works in Los Angeles
E-Book Extras
Discussion Guide
An excerpt from Southland by Nina Revoyr
Also available from Akashic Books and Nina Revoyr
Discussion Guide
1. Lost Canyon opens with two very different epigrams. What do they mean? How do they relate to each other—or not? What do they suggest about the book?
2. What compels Gwen, Oscar, Todd, and Tracy to go on their trip to the Sierra? Are they driven by the same reasons? Different ones? What are they?
3. The first part of the book contains descriptions of three different areas of Los Angeles. How are these neighborhoods different? Collectively, what kind of picture do they paint of the city?
4. When do you first get the sense that the trip may be more complicated than the group originally expects? When do you know that something may go wrong?
5. When the group stops at the Franklin Cash Store, they have very different reactions. What is the significance of their time at the store? What do they learn? How do the events in the store foreshadow what happens later in the story?
6. Why do Gwen, Oscar, and Todd go along with Tracy's suggestions? Do you consider Tracy brave or reckless?
7. Lost Canyon includes many descriptions of nature and the mountains. Is nature enticing in the novel? Compelling? Frightening? How do the descriptions of nature contribute to the story?
8. Do you think of Jose as a perpetrator or a victim? Why?
9. Do you think that the growth of marijuana on public lands is a problem? Why or why not? If marijuana were legalized, what effect would it have on the growing of marijuana fields—and on the drug trade overall?
10. What does A.J. find so irritating about the hikers? Why? Do you think his attitudes have developed in spite of the increasingly diverse population of California—or because of it?
11. Which character do you identify with the most? Why?
12. How have the characters' different backgrounds shaped how they respond to things—whether it's the cash store in Franklin, or the solitude of the wild, or their perceptions of Jose and A.J.?
13. How would you describe the dynamics between the four main characters? How do these dynamics change throughout the book?
14. What did each character discover about him or herself through the course of the story? How did each of them change? Were you surprised by their evolutions?
15. Late in the novel, Todd is described as feeling "better in his body than he ever did at home." What does this mean? Why does he feel better, when he is literally running for his life? What does this suggest about his life in the city?
16. In some ways, Gwen may be the character who is changed the most by the events of the story. How would you describe what happened to her, and where she is now? Why do you think these changes occurred?
17. The main characters have to make choices that involve participating in violence. What do you think of their decisions? Does violence change them? Are there situations in which violence is justifiable?
18. What do you think will happen with each of the characters after the end of the novel?
Please enjoy the following excerpt from Southland by Nina Revoyr
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PROLOGUE
NOW, THE old neighborhood is feared and avoided, even by the people who live there. Although stores wait for customers right down on the Boulevard, people drive to the South Bay, or even over to the Westside, to see a movie or to do their weekly shopping. The local places sell third-rate furniture and last year’s clothes, and despite the promises of city leaders in the months after the riots, no bigger businesses, or schools, are on their way. A few traces of that other time remain—a time when people not only lived in the neighborhood, but never chose to leave it. And if some outsider looked closely, some driver who’d taken a wrong turn and ended up on the run-down streets, if that driver looked past the weather-worn lettering and cracked or broken windows, he’d have a sense of what the neighborhood once was. The grand old library’s still there, and the first public school, with a fireplace in each of the classrooms. The Holiday Bowl’s still open—although it closes now at dusk—where men came in from factory swing shifts and bowled until dawn. There are places where old train tracks still lie hidden beneath the weeds, and if the visitor knelt and pressed his ear against the dulled metal, he might hear the slow rumble of the train that used to run from downtown all the way to the ocean.