Story Prize and California Book Award finalist Victoria Patterson revisits Newport Beach in This Vacant Paradise, examining the intersections of economics, class, race, sex, and family expectations during the mid-1990’s. Esther lives with her grandmother, a virulent matriarch who controls her family with her wealth. Esther knows that an advantageous marriage replete with social standing, familial and peer approval, and financial rewards, will alleviate her struggles. College dropout, fashion boutique clerk, caregiver for a drug-addicted brother, Esther is also aware that beauty and an uncanny savvy foretell success. But she has been known to self-sabotage, and her peers and family are rooting for her not to blow it with her latest beau, especially since, at the ripe age of thirty-three, Esther’s desirability is on the cusp of decline.
