Santa Monica

August 24, 2020
Undocumented Mexican domestic worker Lettie Mendoza and her half-brother, Zack Doheny—a U.S. citizen because of the Floridian father who raised him—inhabit overlapping but poignantly different worlds in the pseudonymous Lucas’s promising debut. Lettie discovers Zack’s dead body at the Santa Monica, Calif., gym where he was a star trainer popular with the ladies. Flash back to the months before. Single mom Lettie is drowning in debt from her six-year-old-son’s staggering medical bills, despite her daily marathon of cleaning, grocery shopping, cooking, and babysitting for many of the same privileged women whose pulses Zack gets racing. Things threaten to become even messier when Lettie’s down-to-earth favorite boss, a Hollywood director’s wife, tries to befriend her while simultaneously succumbing to Zack’s charms. Characters who transcend their stereotypes more than make up for a few forced plot twists. Lucas (the pen name of Julia Fierro and Caeli Wolfson Widger) succeeds in satirizing the gilded enclave of Santa Monica while also tugging at readers’ heartstrings. Agents: Susan Golomb, Writers House, and Marie Massie, Massie & McQuilkin.

September 1, 2020
In Lucas' intricately plotted and thematically ambitious debut novel, Zac Doheny, a magnetically handsome, devoutly Catholic, sex-addicted fitness coach, is found dead on the gym floor. Flashing back five months, the story unfolds through the eyes of the three women closest to him. Lettie, his secret Mexican half-sister, is in the country illegally, cleaning homes of the wealthy. Mel, a recent transplant from New York City with her non-California-compliant body, is the married woman he improbably falls in love with. Sleek, fast-talking, and financially precarious Regina, who has befriended Mel and fantasizes about Zac, lures him into becoming an accomplice in embezzlement. In an intense climax, secrets are revealed and lives are upended in this sunny and seamy seaside town. While delivering a propulsively readable escapist tale with slight murder-mystery elements, Lucas vividly, humorously, and poignantly captures the stark contrasts between the haves, the have-nots, and those teetering on the edge; between faith in a higher power and the secular religion of fitness; between the selfish and the unselfish; and between those awash in vanities and those living in constant fear.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)