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Shine Until Tomorrow
By Carla Malden
Published by Rare Bird Books
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
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Table of Contents
About The Book
A fun and touching novel about the people who raise us, the times that define us, and the stumbling blocks on our way to being a grown-up, Shine Until Tomorrow tells the story of a girl obsessed with the future who must visit the past to learn to live in the present.
Social misfit Mari Caldwell desperately wants to get on with her life. If only she could get there faster—specifically to Yale—and leave behind all the things that make her anxious: driving a car, crossing bridges, her peers, her parents’ divorce. Mari only feels at ease behind the lens of her vintage Leica. Her camera keeps the world—and the people in it—at a safe distance. When Mari comes across an old scrapbook of her mother’s, she discovers her white collar parents were once blue denim hippies. She ends up fighting with her mother and storming out. She pedals her bicycle into a downpour, swerves to avoid an oncoming jeep, and flies smack into a tree. Mari climbs into an abandoned VW van bearing the ghost of a psychedelic paint job, and passes out. The next morning, Mari wakes up to the sound of music. A young couple wander through the glen like hippie gypsies, playing recorder and tambourine. Mari accepts their offer of a ride into San Francisco. But something is wrong; Mari can’t quite figure out what. The skyline, her father’s address, the music on the radio. Everything is slightly off. Except Jimmy, the driver of the van. There’s something about him that calms her inner chatter. Only after she says good-bye to the merry band and runs headlong into a war protest does Mari being to realize: it is June, 1967. In the epicenter of the Summer of Love, Mari makes friends with the would-be rock band, meets the grandfather she never knew, and falls in love. In spite of herself, Mari discovers that love changes everything. It even changes her.
Social misfit Mari Caldwell desperately wants to get on with her life. If only she could get there faster—specifically to Yale—and leave behind all the things that make her anxious: driving a car, crossing bridges, her peers, her parents’ divorce. Mari only feels at ease behind the lens of her vintage Leica. Her camera keeps the world—and the people in it—at a safe distance. When Mari comes across an old scrapbook of her mother’s, she discovers her white collar parents were once blue denim hippies. She ends up fighting with her mother and storming out. She pedals her bicycle into a downpour, swerves to avoid an oncoming jeep, and flies smack into a tree. Mari climbs into an abandoned VW van bearing the ghost of a psychedelic paint job, and passes out. The next morning, Mari wakes up to the sound of music. A young couple wander through the glen like hippie gypsies, playing recorder and tambourine. Mari accepts their offer of a ride into San Francisco. But something is wrong; Mari can’t quite figure out what. The skyline, her father’s address, the music on the radio. Everything is slightly off. Except Jimmy, the driver of the van. There’s something about him that calms her inner chatter. Only after she says good-bye to the merry band and runs headlong into a war protest does Mari being to realize: it is June, 1967. In the epicenter of the Summer of Love, Mari makes friends with the would-be rock band, meets the grandfather she never knew, and falls in love. In spite of herself, Mari discovers that love changes everything. It even changes her.
About The Author
Raised in Los Angeles, Carla Malden began her career working in motion picture production and development before becoming a screenwriter. Along with her father, Academy Award winning actor Karl Malden, she co-authored his critically acclaimed memoir When Do I Start? More recently, Malden published Afterimage: A Brokenhearted Memoir of A Charmed Life, her own fiercely personal account of battling the before and surviving the after of losing her first husband to cancer. Afterimage is a journey through grief to gratitude that alerts an entire generation: this is not your mother’s widowhood. Carla’s feature writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, highlighting the marvels and foibles of Southern California and Hollywood. She sits on the Board of the Geffen Playhouse. Her first novel, Search Heartache, came out from Rare Bird Books in 2019. Shine Until Tomorrow is her second novel. Carla Malden lives in Brentwood with her husband and ten minutes (depending on traffic) from her daughter.
Product Details
- Publisher: Rare Bird Books (August 8, 2023)
- Length: 304 pages
- ISBN13: 9781644283615
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Raves and Reviews
Carla Malden’s touching time-travel novel Shine Until Tomorrow gives the space-time continuum a great run for its money. But that’s nothing compared to her inspired treatment of the snarky, heartbreaking, hilarious vulnerability of adolescence as experienced by her unforgettable (and unforgetting) narrator, Mari. What Malden knows about family, memory, and love is what readers across generations will be grateful to remember. I don’t know why, but this lovely book made me go check that my suede fringe ’60s jacket was still safe in the back closet. It was, and it still fit. As does every single sentence of this continually surprising, charming tale.
– Joseph Di Prisco, Author of The Good Family Fitzgerald and Subway to California; Board Chairman, The Simpson Literary Project
Shine Until Tomorrow is a delightful story about a girl, a summer romance, the power of finding your true self, and hippies! It’s a fun, fast-paced, read-in-one-sitting book that will make you want to live in the 1960s . . . a highly recommended Young Adult book by Carla Malden!
– Anastasia Gkaitatzi, Manhattan Book Review
The writing is vivid and lively, and there’s a lot of heart, determination, and emotional insight along the way.
– Mary Eisenhart, Common Sense Media
Shine Until Tomorrow is a powerful story that embraces elements of growth, 1960s history, and coming of age that goes beyond introducing Mari to her parents’ world, but continues that journey into her choices for her future and how she changes her psyche.
Young adult as well as adult audiences looking for a powerful psychological discussion of transformation and understanding will find the adventure here lies not just in discovering love and newfound connections, but using both to change trajectories and tackle fears of the future.
Mari will remain connected to these days and their impact for the rest of her life, and readers will be captivated by her positive and unexpected evolution.
– Diane Donovan, Editor, California Bookwatch
Madeleine L’Engle meets Ken Kesey! As a devoted consumer of YA literature and a historian of the United States in the 1960s, I enthusiastically recommend this beautifully written page-turner about a young woman of today whose “back pages” will take you on a remarkable trip to San Francisco 1967.
– Professor Laura Kalman, UC Santa Barbara, author of The Long Reach of the Sixties
Carla Malden’s novel Shine Until Tomorrow may be written for and aimed at a young adult audience—and it will certainly find an enthusiastic reception from readers in that demographic—but its charm, humor, and wisdom should make it an enjoyable coming-of-age story for many older readers as well.
– Kenneth Salzmann, Reader's Favorite
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