by Lisa Gitlin (Author)
Faced with the sudden and unexpected death of her mother, disillusioned novelist Joanna Jacobs begins chronicling her unruly childhood in 1960's Cleveland, Ohio. But the writing exercise that starts out as a means to reflect and refocus becomes a journal of Joanna's rebellious existence. Jewish and gay, yet unwilling to expose herself to the accompanying scrutiny and rejection, Joanna spends much of her youth fostering chaos and embracing self-denial, even while celebrating an affirming commitment to the psychiatric ward.
After a inadvertent bomb threat to a conservative talk-show host brings the FBI knocking on her door, Joanna finds herself navigating an unexpected immigrant invasion, a crew of juvenile delinquents in her living room, and a never ending low pressure system. When the going finally gets too tough to wrangle alone, Joanna turns to her lifelong friends for emotional support--but this comfort is tempered by a confusing cocktail of lingering hurts, unresolved anger, and resurgent disappointment, making it even more difficult for Joanna to put her life to paper.
Postcards from the Canyon is a snapshot of one woman's rapidly changing world, where control is an illusion and chaos offers shelter from an unrelenting storm.
Front Jacket
Postcards from the Canyon is a journey through the 1960's, from the perspective of a disturbed young girl from Cleveland, Ohio. Joanna Jacobs is gay but would never in a million years admit it to anyone, not even to herself. She and her friends live their lives against a backdrop of events such as the election and assassination of a president, the evolution of 60's music, white flight in a postwar neighborhood, racial conflicts and rioting on city streets, and, finally, the entrenched homophobia of the times, which deprives Joanna of any hope of ever having a normal life.
Her terror about herself, combined with a disturbed and chaotic home life, compel her to act out in all kinds of ways. She leads a neighborhood campaign to torment a lesbian couple. She becomes her school's number one behavior problem. She sets fires. Her behavior alarms all the adults around her, except her parents, damaged survivors of the Depression and the Great War, who refuse to see their daughter as anything other than perfect. Eventually Joanna ends up on a psychiatric ward, where she falls in love with half the nurses, endears herself to the adult patients, makes friends with a bunch of crazy kids, and has so much fun that she never wants to leave. But leaving the cocoon of the loony bin forces her to face the scary fact that she can't remain a child forever. The story of the girl Joanna is being told by her adult self fifty years later, in modern day New York City. She's a writer, and has begun a book of "creative nonfiction" in order to regain control of her life, which has gone haywire: Her mother recently died due to a medical error. The FBI has ordered her to get a psychiatric evaluation after she made a hysterical phone call to a TV station. The only woman she's ever loved is shacking up with her best friend. Her Brooklyn tenement has been "taken over" by undocumented Chinese immigrants. Eventually a crew of juvenile delinquents will invade her apartment and turn it into a clubhouse . And then it will start raining for weeks on end. Adding to Joanna's distress is that the U.S. government is being run by fanatics and lunatics. Joanna is trying to preserve her sanity by toiling away at her book about growing up in a world so different from the present one that it's hard to imagine that it ever existed at all. But what links her past to her present are her two best girlfriends, the friends who accompanied her on her childhood adventures and who are still in her life, a half-century later. One of them has remained her steadfast loyal friend. But she is furious at the other one. She's even more angry at her now than she was when they first met, in the days of skate keys and hoola hoops and a future that seemed to stretch into the glorious distance, that nobody ever imagined would end up becoming the mess that it is today. LISA GITLIN is a freelance writer who calls New York, NY home. Her debut novel, I Came Out For This?, was the first book to simultaneously be awarded IPPY Gold Medals in both the LGBT Fiction and Humor categories.Author Biography
Lisa Gitlin is a freelance writer who lives in New York, NY.