The four Becker brothers – David, Nick, Clay, and Andy – meet the Vonn boys for a rumble at the SunBlesst packinghouse in 1954. That’s when they first see the two Vonn girls; the youngest, Janelle, is five. That evening Max and Monika Becker load the boys in their Studebaker and take them to the Vonns’ house to apologize. Nick Becker notices that Janelle has a black eye and suspects that she was hit by one of her brothers.

The years pass, and the paths of the Beckers and the Vonns keep intersecting. The Becker brothers grow up – David becomes a minister, Nick a policeman, Clay joins the CIA and is killed in Vietnam, Andy becomes a newspaper reporter.

Janelle Vonn begins attending David’s church and eventually informs him that she’s being molested and abused by her brothers. She’s placed with another family. At the age of eighteen, she is named Miss Tustin only to lose the crown because she was on a Playboy magazine cover. At the age of nineteen her decapitated body is found in the abandoned SunBlesst packinghouse. An autopsy reveals she was pregnant. Even though she earned only a little money by modeling, she has two thousand dollars in her bank account.

Nick and Andy begin separate investigations into her life and murder. In the first chapter which is set in the present, however, Andy tells Nick they got it wrong. What is the truth?

It would deceptive to describe California Girl as a straight mystery. This is really a family saga – the story of the Beckers and the Vonns – with a mystery thread running through it. The overall tone is morose – poor little Janelle never had a chance. The narrative is serpentine with considerable shifting from time period to time period and character to character. There is no single hero –David, Nick, and Andy share equally in the spotlight.

With so much jumping around, it’s not easy to become deeply immersed in the story. I had no difficulty sticking with it (the fact that I was stuck in either an airport or airplane for the length of time I read it may have been a factor), but I never became really engrossed.

One of the book’s strengths is the period feel to the story. The largest portion is set in the 1960's, and those readers who were there will get that deja vu feeling all over again. Richard Nixon and Charles Manson make brief cameo appearances.

T. Jefferson Parker is an excellent writer, and any book by him is worth checking out. Nonetheless, I would recommend Silent Joe as a better introduction to his writing than California Girl.

--Lesley Dunlap