Peace with Paradise Begins
a little peek at your free book...
Making Peace with Paradise: an autobiography of a california girl, by Tania Runyan, is being gifted to book lovers in June, as a poetic start to summer. (Paid subscribers.)
Here’s a peek of the book, below, including Tania’s introduction and a downloadable excerpt of the discussion questions. We hope you enjoy. :)
Introduction
I grew up five miles from the Pacific Ocean, hedged in by backyard bougainvillea, roses, and kumquats. My mother kept yellow African daisies in flower beds surrounded by the cool, succulent hearts of dichondra. Jacaranda trees dropped purple flowers, which, during our rare rain showers, floated like amethysts in the gutters. I wore sandals on Christmas.
But I dreamed of everywhere else.
In fourth grade, I saved up twenty dollars to buy the large red Hammond Ambassador World Atlas I spotted at Waldenbooks in the Westminster Mall. As soon as I brought it home, I lay by my bedroom’s screen door that opened to our tropical backyard and started to explore. Soon I realized it wasn’t the far-flung countries I was drawn to, but other states. States very different from mine.
The California two-page spread unnerved me. An inset diagram at the upper-right corner indicated the state’s place on the globe: a gash of red against the curving green land, an open wound on the earth.
My imagination took refuge in places like Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas. Kansas sat like a preschool rectangle, most of its counties similarly shaped and contained by perfect corners and lines.
I wanted to lie on the quiet blanket of Kansas with its quilted edges of farm towns and soda-fountain main streets, where families didn’t yell or rip telephones from walls.
Of course, I didn’t know about tornadoes or thunderstorms or slaughtering pigs in barns and frozen pipes. I just knew these places were clean and predictable and far. Towns like Plains. Crystal Springs. Hope. Towns where I could hide.
I didn’t realize my home had a history of providing abundant food and gold to the world or that Hollywood was any big deal. I didn’t know people spent their life savings to move here or that TV shows like Three’s Company were cool precisely because they were set just miles from my house.
In middle school, I started collecting pen pals from all over the country. I also corresponded with a few kids from Paris and Tokyo. Mostly? I was interested in girls named Jane from the Midwest.
Tell me about fall, I would write. Tell me about snow.
Why? You live by Disneyland! San Diego! Mountains! The Beach!
But I often felt nervous passing through the hallway of my own home, and the Golden State was simply where I lived. For me, there was no California Dreaming. I just was, at the center of it all.
Photo by L.L. Barkat. Used with permission.
"I just was at the center of it all."