31 Paradiso: A Novel

When Francine Ephesians Didwell loses the love of her life, she is forced to reconnect with her estranged family. She’s led two lives up until now, one with her troubled religious family, and another of emancipated rebellion with her lover. Adrift, Francine relocates to 1990s Venice Beach where she struggles to make a living doing massages and managing her new real estate of bread-and-butter apartments in hell. The novel moves between Francine’s new home and her family estate just fifty miles inland. Throughout, she is confronted and comforted by a host of characters: siblings and parents who offer a particular kind of conditional love, and the denizens of Venice Beach squatting on not-so-public property and wandering the neighborhood of her ‘almost’ beachfront home. Trying to live in both worlds, Francine discovers she must face the truth about dark family secrets or lose herself in the oblivion of drugs. Painful and funny, Francine’s life force and the wonderful characters of the mean streets of Venice illuminate every page.