Temper CA

Fiction. LGBTQIA Studies. California Interest. Joy Temper grew up wandering the woods of Temper, CA, a Gold Rush town her family helped establish in the 1840s. When she returns to Temper for her grandfather's funeral, she discovers that the stories she's long traded on about her hippie upbringing have little to do with reality. Her struggles to face who she once was, and what she now desires, force her to confront family secrets and long-suppressed memories in a novella both familial and romantic, contemporary and historical.

Paul Skenazy grew up in Chicago, studied at the University of Chicago and Stanford, and taught at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has published essays, stories, and reviews in a range of newspapers and magazines, as well as critical work on James M. Cain and other noir writers. He lives in Santa Cruz with the poet Farnaz Fatemi.