He hasn’t seen his mother for years but decides to travel to the West Coast to find her. The most heart-rending story is that of Ren, a young man who has just been released from juvenile detention on the East Coast. When another person joins them in their shack, the bonds of their friendship become strained.

Sam, short for Samoan, tells Blake about the myths and legends of his people and Blake steals medications to help his friend cope with the pain of his rotting leg. They are a curious pair, petty criminals who have stuck together for years, surviving rather than living, and always one step in front of the law. Not far away in the desert, Blake and Sam are holed up in a shack hoping that Sam’s bad leg break might heal. Britt joins in one of the most disturbing episodes in the novel, when two hundred chickens are individually beheaded and plucked, ready for sale. Previously inseparable, they are suddenly split apart by a single act of rebellion. Patrick has twin sons, Owen and James, who hate being on the chicken farm as much as their mother. She turns up at a chicken ranch in the desert where interns work in return for bed, board, and spiritual healing from the charismatic Patrick. There is Britt, a young woman trying to escape her former life. Six disparate characters are revealed in a series of vignettes set in 20, the year of the naked runner. While Tony is stopped, the naked runner goes on. The incident is all over the news channels and the internet. Tony, hemmed in by his boring job and inflexible wife, is overcome by the sense of freedom that the naked man inspires and he abandons his car and runs after him. Suddenly a naked man appears, running between the cars at a steady pace.

It opens with a traffic jam on an LA freeway, people sweating in their cars as they try to get to work. Set in modern-day California but not in the affluent areas often portrayed in films and television programmes, this work is located in the grimy, smelly underbelly of the sunshine state and the city of angels. Sometimes it is beatific, sometimes surreal, and sometimes the stuff of nightmares. There is a dream-like quality to Wonder Valley, Ivy Pochoda’s third novel. Published by The Indigo Press 20 September 2018

Wonder valley a novel