Rachel Stark’s debut novel, Perris, California, shows “the real ugly of the whole thing,” as the matriarch of the book’s central  family puts it. It digs into the roots of small-town rural poverty, a close-knit community and the violent misogyny aimed at women in such communities. It also tugs at heartstrings, praises the steadfast courage of mothers and provides a colorful cast of resilient characters clawing their way to understanding one another.

Rachel Stark

Tessa, a young mother of two expecting a third child, encounters a close high school friend, Mel, after their bitter break-up ten years earlier. The shock triggers a series of flashbacks and memories of a time that was more carefree compared to the overwhelming responsibilities Tessa deals with as a mother. It also brings back memories of her own mother, exacerbating a difficult situation with her overbearing mother-in-law. Tessa has to deal with the small-town rumors resurfacing, that her teenage relationship with Mel was more than friendly.

The technique of showcasing each character and his or her origin story gives the reader perspective on each character’s flaws and strengths while interconnecting them tightly to one another. At one point, Tessa describes her feelings about Mel: “She was just this bright, bright magnetizing light, you know? She made me happy and hopeful despite all the ugliness.” Stark flips the coin on the situation and shows Mel’s homelife as anything but perfect, neither ten years earlier nor in the present. Ugliness is a fact of life to be dealt with, accepted, forgiven or passed on to another generation.

Initially, I found it difficult to understand the grammatical errors intentionally woven into the writing. Normally, this appears as dialect of the speaker, but Stark utilizes errors within the characters’ thoughts outside of dialogue. The vernacular becomes seamless and vital to the community’s character. An example on page two compares Tessa’s battered appearance to a horse about to get shot: “[i]ts leg was broken in three places after a bad jump, and there wasn’t no coming back from that.” Basically, the book requires you to turn off your inner autocorrect. The grammatical misuse purposefully immerses the reader in this specific place and its people, eventually becoming almost unnoticeable in its naturalness.

The brief respites the reader experiences from violent attacks, both physical and emotional, are few and far between. One perfect day can lead to physical trauma, and another might lead to overwhelming tragedy. Stark paces the story among multiple perspectives of the characters, allowing actions to be repeated and experienced from different points of view. The prologue hints at an inciting incident that’s not revealed until three quarters of the way through the novel. It’s worth every word, sentence and page the reader experiences to get there, but be warned: it’s disturbing if you have a weak stomach or are triggered by traumatic violence.

Stark, who grew up in Perris, has crafted a beautiful story about its frightfulness. Though the story takes place far from the author’s current home in southern Colorado, Perris, California exemplifies brutal poverty found in so many similar towns in America and the human resilience required to survive and thrive therein. “Each other is the whole of what we’ve got. People are there for us to love,” matriarch Angie tells us. “It ain’t the other way around. It’s the greatest and most excruciating gift of life.” This is a sadly uplifting tale about escaping trauma while strengthening character and loving family with ferocity, despite the terrible things that happened in the past. I look forward to enjoying Stark’s sophomore effort.