"A rich blend of California history in a well mastered plot that maintains an enduring
element of surprise."Booklist

"Lorna Raver performs with great intelligence and enthusiasm. Her flexible voice
reaches from sultry to shrill to raspy effortlessly."AudioFile

Pasadena, David Ebershoff's sweeping, richly imagined novel, is set against the backdrop
of Southern California during the first half of the twentieth century and charts its rapid transformation
from frontier to suburb. At the story's center is Linda Stamp, a fishergirl born in 1903 on a coastal
onion farm in San Diego's North County, and the three men who upend her life and vie for her affection:
her pragmatic farming brother, Edmund; Captain Willis Poore, a Pasadena rancher with a heroic
military past; and Bruder, the mysterious young man Linda's father brings home from World War I.

Pasadena spans Linda's adventurous and romantic life, weaving the tales of her Mexican mother
and her German-born father with those of the rural Pacific Coast of her youth and of the small, affluent
city, Pasadena, that becomes her home.

When Linda's father returns from the war to the fishing hamlet of Baden-Baden-by-the-Sea with the
darkly handsome Bruder, she glimpses love and a world beyond her own. Linda follows Bruder to the
seemingly greener pastures of Pasadena, where he is the foreman of a flourishing orange ranch, the
homestead and inheritance of the charming bachelor Willis Poore.

Lorna Raver has won AudioFile Earphones Awards for her readings of The Lodger and I Am Madame X. She is also an award-winning actress who has appeared on stage and in such television shows as NYPD Blue.