Holy land

This is an exquisitely realized and wholly original memoir of growing up in blue-collar 1950s Lakewood, California, the quintessential post-World War II American suburb and the prototype for the countless tract developments that would follow. At once a portrait of the author's coming of age, as well as a history of Lakewood, Holy Land is about the way places shape lives. It's about the difficulties of ordinariness - both good and bad. It's a collection of intensely observed and felt episodes in the making of a city that parallel the making of a life. It's about the resonance of mundane…