Rachel Stark talks about her first novel, ‘Perris, California’
A new novel is titled “Perris, California.” It’s by Rachel Stark, who is from Perris, California.
Her book’s debut was celebrated Wednesday night at Riverside’s Culver Center for the Arts. Stark was joined by two other Riverside County writers, Susan Straight and Alex Espinoza, who likewise employ Inland Empire settings and are published by New York houses.
Several times during the hourlong conversation, Stark referenced her hometown, only a few miles away from where we were gathered, by name and state.
“I have a lot of love for Perris, California,” she said at one point.
Maybe that’s a reflex born of habit.
(Or she’s subtly pushing her book by working its title into casual conversation.)
Audiences in most of the cities where she’ll be promoting her novel, which was published March 26 by Penguin Random House, will require the clarification. Especially if she makes a stop in Paris, Texas.
Stark joked about how Perris is commonly misunderstood by outsiders in conversation.
“Almost any encounter I have, a job interview, whatever,” she said, “when I say Perris, they say, ‘Ohh, Paris,’ and I say, ‘No, not that Paris.’”
The Inland Empire itself scarcely exists in the public consciousness even in California, much less in publishing houses on the opposite coast.
“Let’s talk about these hidden landscapes that aren’t hidden to us,”
Straight said to kick things off. As authors, she continued, “We get two choices: We’re supposed to write about the beaches or Hollywood.”
She prefers to write about Riverside, which she has
fictionalized as Rio Seco. She considered it a victory when the main image on the cover of her 2022 novel, “Mecca,” was a Joshua tree and not a palm tree.
Espinoza, whose second novel, “The Sons of El Rey,” is coming in June, expressed delight not only with Stark’s book but with its flag-planting title.
“What makes me happy about Rachel’s book,” Espinoza said, “is now we have another stamp on this map of the Inland Empire.”
Espinoza said that in Straight’s classes at UC Riverside, where she teaches creative writing, she encouraged students like him to use locales familiar to them. That buoyed him to set his first novel, “Still Water Saints,” in a fictionalized version of Colton.
Explained Espinoza: “We thought we had to write about important places like New York or Paris.”
“The Paris that doesn’t matter,” Straight quickly interjected, to audience laughter.
“The Paris with that tower thing,” Espinoza agreed.
Stark’s novel is set in the 1980s and ’90s in Perris, where she lived until age 14. She attended Riverside Community College and UC Riverside, then wrote the first half of her novel in graduate school at UC Davis.
A quarter of the way in, she decided that the setting needed to be identified as Perris.
The specificity was important to her. She incorporated the rural landscape — the hills, the sage, Lake Perris — and a few real-life places. One of the characters attends St. James School, just as Stark did.
She wrote most of the novel in Colorado, where she lives, rather than risk blurring her memories of Perris by returning.
“I intentionally didn’t go back to Perris while I was writing this,” she said, “because I wanted to write about the place I grew up. Perris has changed so much.”
How Perris will react to a novel centered on an abused young woman living in a trailer park remains to be seen. Straight said the female characters are strong and complex and that the novel is hopeful, not bleak. In her blurb for the back jacket, she wrote: “This novel will live alongside classics of young womanhood.”
The existence of a book with the words “Perris, California” on the cover, accompanied by a pastoral photo, which Stark said she loves and had to fight for, could become a point of pride locally. She said she hopes Perris enjoys the recognition.
“Someone came up the other day and said
‘You know Chicken
King?’” Stark said, smiling. “I said, ‘Yeah, I know Chicken King. That’s the spot.’ ” At the same event, another person brought up St. James Catholic School and Stark named her favorite teacher.
A writer in Wednesday’s audience asked about naming real places. Is that welcoming or off-putting to readers? Stark sides with welcoming.
“The more specific you are, the more universal it is,” Stark contended. “Everyone has their own Chicken King.”
As inspirational sayings go, that’s pretty good.
Afterward, Stark signed copies of her book and chatted. When it was my turn in line, I asked about this return visit. She said she’d been in the area a few days for promotional purposes, including the L.A. Times Festival of
Books and Riverside’s Cellar Door Books, and had been a guest that morning in Straight’s class.
The last time she was in Perris, she said, was in November 2022 for her mother’s birthday. While there, she learned her novel had been accepted — more to celebrate.
One final question: What should I order at Chicken King? (According to Yelp, it’s a fast-food Chinese restaurant that, why not, also serves pizza.)
“You’ve got to get the chicken. The fried chicken,” Stark advised.
I’ll assume she knows best. She’s from Perris, California.
brIEfly
Riverside’s Mission Inn on April 15 was named one of America’s 25 Most Literary Hotels. That’s a new list from Historic Hotels of America, a program of the National
Trust for Historic Preservation. The citation focuses on horror writer Anne Rice, who liked to stay in the hotel’s Amistad Suite, which she featured in her 2009 novel “Angel Time” and its sequel “Of Love and Evil.” Her protagonist, a Europhile, muses that the hotel fulfills his need to be among Medieval art and architecture. OK. But maybe he just liked Riverside.
David Allen writes Friday, Sunday and Wednesday, his mission. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @ davidallen909 on Twitter.