A visit to Pasadena
The streets of the town, the halls of the school, the tower, the marbled floors of the church. An instant view and every detail floods back into familiarity. I spent eight years of my early days, my young formative days here, within these walls, surrounded by the marble of this magnificent church, in the balmy, often smoggy Pasadena air. Today, as a tribute to my journey, a parallel reminiscence for A THEORY OF EXPANDED LOVE. It’s an exciting time, as reviews are coming in.
I can’t believe how beautiful, the church. Cool shiny floors, four altars on the sides, three at the front, everything in marble and gold. The most amazing thing was, in all the time I spent wishing and hoping in church for the blessing of God, I had never noticed that the huge columns on the sides surrounding the pews were each made of different colored marble. I could only observe from a distance.
The streets of Pasadena surrounded us. Changed. Storefronts elderly at the time replaced by chain link fences & freeway roadways. And yet. The soles of my shoes walked the same sidewalk outside St. Andrew’s where I stood on my graduation day from 8th grade with Sister Jeanne Dolora. Blushing with youth, adventures not yet imagined. And now, the concept of time so difficult to grasp.
We went to Vroman’s Bookstore. After all. The novel itself takes place in Pasadena. And here’s an early fan:Dayna Bartlett of (Walter Hoving Home for Women) outside Vroman’s Bookstore with a copy of A THEORY OF EXPANDED LOVE.
A recent review:
“Hicks takes the reader into the special world of a devout California Catholic family. But wait! Don’t go! This novel is driven by the first-person narrator known as Annie, a sassy and smart 12 year-old upon whose flat chest (she’s the one complaining about it!) you want to pin a medal for being so damned perceptive and belligerent and especially for deploying so many crack Saxon verbs that make you sit up and say, Whoa!—this chick is going to cut through life’s smog and get noticed, if her father doesn’t smack her senseless, which he tries to do, but to him I say, Good luck. Wow, having just finished the book, I feel like I better understand about a billion more people on earth.
“Hicks has created a story rife with domestic tension, and although not all the promises of disaster pay off, there are myriad that do. Hicks brings us real life, and by that I mean the human condition, and by that I mean characters struggling to be free. Problem is, each character is on a different trajectory to find this freedom, and if that doesn’t make for good drama, I don’t know what does.
“Hicks sets her story in the era of the Pope John’s death and the Kennedy Assassination. We all know what we were doing then and what we felt like and how innocent we were, and how deluded and naïve we were, and helpless and rebellious and fed up with authority, which pretty much puts us in Annie’s skin. So, is this a young adult novel? It deserves to sell well as YA or adult fiction. Any book with a protagonist whose antics are seared into a reader’s memory is going to be enjoyed by many.” Writer PJ Reece
“Does the reader need to be one of thirteen children of a near-destructively religious family in post WWII America to get lost in the trance of the period reality that Caitlin Hicks conjures in her coming-of-age tour-de-force? The answer is irrelevant to the pleasure and horror of consuming this book (that’s what you will do – consume it, inhale it, ingest it). In the same way that you don’t have to be a Huck Finn (or a Jim) to be immersed in Mark Twain’s recounting of Huck’s “Adventures”, you don’t have to be penitent Clare for Hicks to make you cry for the injustice of Clare’s fate. Or to be Jude, to share his infantile discoveries, or Madcap, to be swept away by romantic passion, or Mrs. Shea, to bury her doubts over misguided motherhood in order to keep the marital and familial peace.
“Hicks leads you into and guides you through the story by means of the eyes and mind of Annie Shea, a pre-teen torch in a family of torches. Some of the Sheas may disguise themselves as votive candles in their slow moments, but they are all torches when the fuel is poured on. And there is a great deal of fuel, indeed.
“Yet, in the end, it is not Annie’s eyes, or brain or mouth that brings her story over the finish line with grace and power and love . . . it is her heart. Hicks bares Annie’s heart again and again and again and in doing so, the reader’s as well. . . It’s fucking BRILLIANT!”
– Lance Mason, Independent Health Professional, Santa Barbara, California