California Generation; A Novel

Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1970. Presumed First Edition, First printing thus [Published by arrangement with Bantam Books, Inc.]. Hardcover. Very good/Good. [6]570 pages. Signed by the author on the fep. DJ has some wear and is in a plastic sleeve. California Generation focuses on California, but it is about all the kids who grew up in the Sixties; their problems, their morals, their fears and ideals. It is a big novel of our time, written with incisive compassion, that takes a scorching look at the anatomy of a troubled decade. Jacqueline Briskin, née Orgell (18 December 1927 - 24 December 2014) was a British-born American writer specializing in historical fiction from 1970 to 1995. Her books regularly appear on the New York Times bestseller's list. She was a main Selection of the Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club seven times, her novels were translated into 26 languages, and has sold 23,000,000 copies worldwide. Born Jacqueline Orgell on 18 December 1927 in London, England, the daughter of Marjorie and Spencer Orgell. In 1938, her family moved to the United States, and she naturalized in 1944. She attended Beverly Hills High School in Beverly Hills, California and graduated in 1945. On 9 May 1948, she married Bertram Norman "Bert" Briskin, born 17 February 1922. Her husband was an oil executive, who years later became her agent. They had three children: Ralph Louis Briskin, Elizabeth Ann Briskin, and Richard Paul Briskin (alias Richard Sands).[ Briskin sold her first novel in 1970, after which she published 11 other historical novels. California Generation is the author's debut novel! Michelle is a young mother-to-be happily awaiting her baby's birth. Stryker is a high school jock flirting with dangers beyond his dreams. Leigh is the dream girl who has fallen into the arms of a most inappropriate lover. York just wants to be left alone. They're the California generation--a golden, spoiled youth. They live in a sun-drenched land of dreams where the stars come out at night to see, and be seen. Where money, beauty and sex pave the way to success, and where everyone hopes to ride off into the sunset. Derived from a Kirkus review: If you're wondering where it all started--pot, the pill, protest and "It-is-absolutely-necessary-to-lie-to-anyone-over-thirty"--well, according to Miss Briskin it all happened back in California High circa 1961 when James Dean was rebel emeritus and Michele Davy got knocked up by Clay Gillies who said "I want to alter history," and ran off to freedom ride, radicalize and finally obtain a triumphant martyrdom at the hands of the cops during one of those first Berkeley bust-ups. In the meantime this generation is into every scene. The sweet little Jewish girl becomes a commune-er. Japanese Ken Igawa gets into an intense affair with WASP product Leigh Sutherland and becomes a young film-maker. Crippled loner Adam York, son of the "Great Stone Face" of movie epics, goes through homosexual changes. There's SDS and incest, Buddhism and Bob Dylan and one thing's for sure: in California country Ann Landers has been permanently beached. An older generation might call it a Pacific Coast Peyton Place.