The Last Days of California: A Novel [Paperback]

Jess is fifteen years old and waiting for the world to end. Her evangelical father has packed up the family to drive west to California, hoping to save as many souls as possible before the Second Coming. With her long-suffering mother and rebellious (and secretly pregnant) sister, Jess hands out tracts to nonbelievers at every rest stop, Waffle House, and gas station along the way. As Jesss belief frays, her teenage myopia evolves into awareness about her fracturing family. Selected as a Barnes & Noble Discover pick and an Indie Next pick, Mary Millers radiant debut novel reinvigorates the literary road-trip story with wry vulnerability and savage charm.Hilarious and heartbreaking, dark and beautiful, a novel written by one of the most observant and mordant writers alive&This book is terrific.An affecting coming-of-age story from an inspired new voice.A literary snapshot of our times that portrays the affirmation and doubt we often find in family and faith.Miller portrays her characters&with an unwavering intensity&. Millers prose bestows a magnetic beauty on gas-station bathroom stops, Waffle House lunches, and the cast of overfed, overstimulated travelers the Metcalfs encounter along the interstates. &A plangent portrait of American adolescence&. [She delivers] raw the heartbreaking futility of the Metcalfs small triumphs, private embarrassments, and poor decisions with such hilarious precision that you become completely involved in their strugglesand, ultimately, in awe of their abiding hope.Millers depiction of a squabbling, love-you-one-minute, hate-you-the-next family dynamic is spot-on, hilarious, and ultra-relatable&. Sometimes a road-trip novel, particularly one as compulsively devourable asA