Hey, Cali girl, ready for a trip down Memory Lane?

No need to break out old photo albums. Just open The Ruins of California.

Set in the Bay Area and SoCal in the 1970s, Martha Sherrill’s new novel is as much a tribute to that place and time as it is a smart, sweet coming-of-age story.

Inez Ruin is a bright and sensitive girl between worlds. She lives with her gorgeous mother and her Peruvian grandmother in east L.A., where she goes to public school and her BFF is a Mormon Girl Scout.

But she also visits her bohemian father (and his glamorous girlfriends) in San Francisco, where he turns her on to films, music clubs, and the era’s other recreational activities.

Pulled this way and that by her parents’ divergent expectations, the whims of the zeitgeist, and the throes of adolescence, Inez does her best to stay true to herself — and to discover who, exactly, that self is.

Her answer? A Californian.

Available online at amazon.com or at your local bookstore.