Bluebird Canyon

Publisher: Hardcover edition, Congdon and Weed, New York

Publisher: Softcover edition

Inside Jacket

Bluebird Canyon is set in a fresh locale for important fiction— southern California, and the fast fluid life of Laguna Beach and Palm Springs. Its brilliantly portrayed central figure, Rex Hooker, is, fittingly, the star of America’s most popular soap opera. People on the street recognize Rex as the dedicated Dr. Kelly, but they don’t know Rex. Not even Rex knows Rex—he can no longer tell if he’s himself or his TV role. So far, he has safely inhabited the world of his famous architect father, his mother (the beautiful “First Lady of Laguna”), his gallant little boy, and the two women who love him. But they cannot save Rex from himself.

A city policeman, “Triphammer,” is now drawn into the Hooker story. As he narrates the book to us, we watch Rex—funny, sweet, rich, and flamboyantly self-destructive—fight a desperate battle to keep from going under. Eventually Trip, challenged by the Hookers’ furious sense of family, is forced to become the custodian of their lives…

Praise

“A rich, ambitious novel, an eighties update of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep… Against a dark, offbeat background, Mr. McCall builds a sure, sustained narrative. It is a compelling, heartfelt book.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“… a serious work of fiction that may have a wide popular appeal… It’s a touching book, sometimes painfully so. McCall knows a thing or two about human frailty.”—Newsday

Excerpt - Opening Page

Never had a family. Being adopted makes you different from the word go—and those kids on the schoolyard don’t let you forget it, when you’re a-dop-ted, a-dop-ted, it’s a stigma, you never really get over it. Not having had a family of my own undoubtedly contributes to the fact that, as a lot of women know, I am not exactly a day at the beach.

At 6:37, Labor Day, I get a call, a two-car accident, no-injury, up where Thalia turns into Temple Hills. I respond promptly, arrive on the scene, and these two are having a verbal shootout at Generation Gap. Standing there shouting insults at each other. What happened was the old geez had pulled over to grab a view of the sunrise over the Pacific (oh, the sun always comes up in the west), and the hippie-kid rear-ended him. Drove his terminal Woody right up all over the ’67 Caddy’s fins. The kid’s girlfriend is sitting in the front seat of the Woody, having hysterics, and the males may come to blows. My patient reasoning, stern expression, and a few well-chosen menacing phrases do not prove effective. So since the kid clearly does not have both oars in the water, I spread him against the Woody. Of course he’s got some dandy controlled substance in his pocket. I take his driver’s license, go back and sit in the patrol car, call in a 10-28, and all of a sudden my clipboard and my ball-point and my sunglasses and everything are flying all over everywhere. I’m whiplashed. It’s the kid, who has climbed back up into his Woody, put it in reverse, floored it, and slammed into the blue-and-white to the tune of at least a thou. This gets me excited. Then the hysterical girl runs away, charging up Temple Hills. The geez from the ’67 Caddy trots after her in his shiny white shoes, calling “Miss? Oh, miss, we mustn’t leave the scene of an accident!” Girl turns around, gives him the finger running backward, and falls on her can. Then she gets up, gives him the finger with her whole forearm, and continues running. The geez walks back, shaking his head like “What’s this world coming to?” The hippie kid beside me is smiling and making a sound like an electric train. Now Labor Day traffic is backed up, it’s just after seven A.M., when I am supposed to be on my way home to home-sweet-mobile-home….