Edie Meidav's third novel, Lola, California, moves between the present of 2008 and the past of the 1980s and tells the story of two friends, Lana and Rose. Navigating the decade of their teens with confidence, the girls are inseparable. They seem to satisfy an unnamed need in each other, and are known as Lola One and Lola Two, or just "the Lolas." Orphaned Rose craves the dynamic of Lana's family, a triad of intellectual parents and an only daughter. In Rose, Lana finds the fuel to stoke her creative, though occasionally destructive, flame. While their friendship blossoms, they are also under a shadow: Lana's father, Vic, has a cultish fame as the prophet of California's burgeoning neuroethology movement.
As adolescents, the Lolas go through high school crushes, teenage hijinks and road trips with Vic. As they grow older, they experience more harrowing circumstances, including rape in a foreign country, employment as strippers and a stint in an asylum. With time, they grow apart, then, as adults, come together to deal with their life choices, including Vic's imprisonment for an inexplicable crime, Lana's false entry into motherhood and Rose's penchant for relationships based in the past.
At the outset, Meidav's writing style might seem difficult. However, readers who persist to the end of Lola, California will see any frustrations satisfied, and they will not be surprised to learn that Meidav is also a poet. --Roni K. Devlin, owner, Literary Life Bookstore & More