NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION 5 UNDER 35 PICK. FINALIST FOR THE VCU CABELL FIRST NOVELIST AWARD. LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION'S FIRST NOVEL PRIZE. Named one of the Best Books of 2018 by NPR, Bookforum and Bustle . One of Entertainment Weekly 's 10 Best Debut Novels of 2018. An Amazon Best Book of the Month and named a fall read by Buzzfeed, Nylon, Entertainment Weekly, Elle, Vanity Fair, Vulture, Refinery29 and Mind Body Green A gorgeous, raw debut novel about a young woman braving the ups and downs of motherhood in a fractured America In Lydia Kiesling’s razor-sharp debut novel, The Golden State , we accompany Daphne, a young mother on the edge of a breakdown, as she flees her sensible but strained life in San Francisco for the high desert of Altavista with her toddler, Honey. Bucking under the weight of being a single parent―her Turkish husband is unable to return to the United States because of a “processing error”―Daphne takes refuge in a mobile home left to her by her grandparents in hopes that the quiet will bring clarity. But clarity proves elusive. Over the next ten days Daphne is anxious, she behaves a little erratically, she drinks too much. She wanders the town looking for anyone and anything to punctuate the long hours alone with the baby. Among others, she meets Cindy, a neighbor who is active in a secessionist movement, and befriends the elderly Alice, who has traveled to Altavista as she approaches the end of her life. When her relationships with these women culminate in a dangerous standoff, Daphne must reconcile her inner narrative with the reality of a deeply divided world. Keenly observed, bristling with humor, and set against the beauty of a little-known part of California, The Golden State is about class and cultural breakdowns, and desperate attempts to bridge old and new worlds. But more than anything, it is about motherhood: its voracious worry, frequent tedium, and enthralling, wondrous love. " The Golden State anchors Daphne’s journey in the visceral and material realities of motherhood . . . The novel beautifully depicts the golden light of California, the smell of the fescue grasses, the thinness of the air, and the way that Daphne and Honey often feel overwhelmed by the scale of the spaces they find themselves in. The result is less an untroubled analogy between the landscapes of motherhood and the American West than an invitation to think more deeply about how limited our canonical literary imaginings of each have been." -- Sarah Blackwood, The New Yorker "Kiesling vividly renders the high desert town, its beauty and its starkness, its juniper-scented air and its neglect, the way it both centers and saps Daphne. Kiesling is also an astute cultural commentator, shedding light on our current political divide and university politics and Orientalism and the barbarism of America past and present while shedding light on parts of California often ignored by news and literature. She reminds us that the Golden State is more complexly storied than we often give it credit for; she also reminds us that for all its stretches of tedium and potential for heartbreak, the state of raising a young child can be pretty golden, too." -- Gayle Brandeis , San Francisco Chronicle "Dry, observant, self-aware, smart without being showy . . . Respectfully but unsentimentally, [Lydia Kiesling] articulates the sorts of emotional drama that undergirds life with a small child, giving shape and consequence to the joy, boredom, nostalgia, tenderness, and frustration that parenting constantly provokes . . . An excellent, accomplished, original novel, one of the best I’ve read in a while." -- Adelle Waldman, Bookforum "Gorgeously written, deeply engaging, character-driven . . . It's been a very long time since my daughters were toddlers, but Daphne's trenchant observations of her complicated feelings brought it all back." -- Nancy Pearl, NPR (Best Books of 2018) "Remarkable . . . What Kiesling syntactically accomplishes is an exquisite look at the gulf between the narrow repetitive toil of motherhood and the sprawling intelligence of the mother that makes baby care so maddening . . . We don’t get to enter a golden state without conflict or boredom. But love can persist despite crappy Skype connections, and wonder can flourish in the interstices between tasks." -- Heather Abel, Slate "In heartrending prose, Lydia Kiesling weaves through an exploration of the political and the private, fear and love, survival and obligation, loneliness and longing." -- Arianna Rebolini, Buzzfeed (Best Books of Fall 2018) "a quiet adventure that tackles questions of motherhood, academic pursuits, sexism, and immigration. In a narrative that could have become claustrophobic, Kiesling’s prose feels open and propulsive as Daphne ponders issues that plague all mothers, women, people." -- Vanity Fair (This Fall's Best Fiction) "A first novel of deep personal specificity that also illu