Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gold Fame Citrus | 2015 | Claire Vaye Watkins | Buy |
| 2 | I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness | 2021 | Claire Vaye Watkins | Buy |
Claire Vaye Watkins’s two novels take different approaches to the American West. Gold Fame Citrus is speculative — a climate novel set in a California where drought has made the state nearly uninhabitable. The story follows a young couple who take in an abandoned toddler and flee into the vast Amargosa Dune Sea.
I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness is more personal, following a character who shares Watkins’s name and biography as she travels from her home in Ann Arbor to Reno, confronting her family history and her father’s connection to Charles Manson. The novel was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.