When Edan Lepucki was working on the 1980s section of her forthcoming novel, “,” she found herself describing the streets of Los Angeles. A young couple, about to become parents, move to an apartment on Edinburgh Avenue — the same apartment where she grew up.
The couple, Ray and Cherry, have escaped from a cult-like commune near Santa Cruz that is led by Ray’s mother. Justifiably fearing her wrath, they reinvent themselves and don’t tell their daughter, Opal, about their past. Over the generations, the family keeps many secrets, including an inherited ability to slip through time.“There’s something a little bit mystical,” says Lepucki, an L.A. native.
We meet Ursa as a teenager, scarred by abuse, longing for escape, which she initially finds when she discovers she can travel through time — mentally, at least, and only to her own life’s moments. After running away to San Francisco, she will revisit her happiest childhood moments, her good times with a lover who later spurned her, her days mothering baby Ray.