The Golden State will be available for purchase in eBook and print format in the next few days!!
On what starts as a teenage summer road trip, Matt and Becca Rosen journey into a uniquely American hell…
Described as confidently written, historically sweeping, and stylistically adventurous, Margolis’s debut literary work provides unique and unsettling insight into the 21st century Jewish-American reckoning with the American dream.
In June of 2017, on the verge of embarking on a cross-country road trip with a close high school friend, I started writing. Characters and situations had been brewing in my head ever since I returned from Kanazawa, Japan the previous summer.
There was a famous architect living in Los Angeles, the patriarch of a huge Jewish family. His grandchildren had a strange encounter with magic and mystery after his unexpected death. One of the children in the intervening generation was living in Japan and struggling to decide whether to come home. Important moments of American history had to be involved. But was it about the grandfather? His children? Or their children? Ideas percolated, evolved. The architect turned into a filmmaker. The grandchildren became the heroes.
Nearly five years later, The Golden State is complete.
The first novel I wrote, Cadivel, was a YA fantasy. The Golden State is so many things: a road trip story, a coming of age story, a literary experiment, an exploration of American history, a confrontation with Jewish-American identity. The Golden State is the most serious and the most soaring story I’ve ever written. It spans over 100 years, four generations, three continents, and the continental 48 American states. It is the story of Jewish immigrants and their descendants, a reckoning with a complicated family history, and a reckoning with the uncontrollable, violent, and supreme forces of good, evil, manifest destiny, revenge, and love that have whiplashed back and forth across America since long before the day of its founding.
The concept is as follows:
When their maverick great-uncle dies and leaves behind a cryptic will, sixteen-year-old Matt and his older sister Becca leave their California suburb on a road trip to find a long-lost, magic family bracelet. Matt doesn’t care about his family, his Judaism, or history at all—only his great Goyish uncle who gave him a key to something greater. But as they follow the clues left behind by the bracelet to New York City and beyond, they discover an unexpected and disturbing relationship between the bracelet, their family, and a murderous white supremacist known only as ‘the Cowboy.’ Matt and Becca try to anticipate the Cowboy’s next move as they chase him on a whirlwind tour of American and family history.
Sound interesting? Even a little? Well, The Golden State is coming to paperback and Kindle on Thursday, February 17th. Pre-order your copy on Amazon RIGHT NOW and stay tuned for exciting illustrations, images, and excerpts!
For now, I’m happy to present the cover as well as a very short excerpt:
“The Delaware Water Gap, Part 2”
This is gonna sound like a major tangent, especially at the moment of death and all. (Will our handsome hero survive the terrors of Hurricane Katrina, or will he perish in its awesome floods? After this commercial break!) Just bear with me.
I was never a huge music person. Becca had her lists; I mainly listened to whatever Will handed over. But I did have a pretty great ear in terms of memory, so I could play songs that I knew well in my head, whenever I wanted. Over the years, I collected a mini playlist of songs to listen to when I was bored. ‘Last Nite’ by the Strokes was one, Jeff Buckley’s rendition of ‘Hallelujah’ was another, ‘Let’s Get It On’ was a third. But whenever I got into a bad place, I played ‘Tirandote Flores’ by Eddie Palmieri. It’s a classic Latin jazz tune, one that Grampa Andy used to play in the car. Grampa Andy loved jazz and Latin jazz most of all. The song bore no real relation to anything, but somehow it bore the most significant relationship out of anything to me drowning in the Delaware River. I’ve always dug Tirandote Flores because of the distinct rhythm. My mind can get into its groove. There’s the rhythm of the drums intersecting with the cowbell, swaying horns, that dancing piano. Palmieri’s voice fills with longing at the change-up. It’s stuck with me, especially the accompanying image—‘throwing you flowers.’ I see a shower of flowers in my mind, thrown at someone, that someone depending on the situation. When I asked Paula Klein to the homecoming dance and she said no, flowers thrown at Paula. When we waited for the police after Becca got into a car crash, thrown at Becca. As I contemplated whether or not to try to kiss Christine, at Christine; when Mom told me Grampa Andy died, at Grampa Andy’s crushed corpse. But never until drowning in the Delaware River had I seen those tirando flores coming at me.
That’s all I saw. Thrown flowers, falling on me. Cowbell popping. Trumpets shouting. Piano dashing all about and Palmieri with his head bent in towards the mic, eyes sealed tight, lips that groan and sing.
Tirandote Flores has such a lust for life in it. But unlike a howling opera or agonized tango, it allows for dance. You’ve got the passion for life on the one hand, and the action that expresses the passion in the other. A balanced, tangible will to live. Grampa Andy taught me that there’s nothing more like living than a good Latin jazz tune, and this was the one that I knew best.
Maybe that’s how he went out. Dancing a chacha or mambo in his mind as the train exploded around him.
I swallowed water.
Turned up the Palmieri.
The thunder sounded like a city crumbling around us.
Stay tuned for more… Live on Amazon any day now!
over the offing 