In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Amy Mason Doan’s novel The California Dreamers is a compelling and moving family epic.
Booklist wrote of the book:
“Like a surfer anxiously waiting for a wave, Doan’s narrative ebbs and flows through the different strings of tension binding a family together…Doan’s solemn surfer story shows how the harsh reality behind a picture-perfect scene may offer a different kind of dream.”
In her own words, here is Amy Mason Doan’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel The California Dreamers:
The California Dreamers is about the only girl growing up in an itinerant surf-van family in the ’80s, so the obvious playlist might be a bunch of surf tunes punctuated by David Lee Roth’s “California Girls.” But as a Californian, I have always loathed that song, and the video repulsed me when I was in high school. Remember those splay-legged, bikini’d women lined up like race-track hurdles, with Roth frolicking under them?
So here’s what I played as I wrote and revised the book over the last four years.
They’re mostly alternative ’80s tunes – as a GenXer, this is the music that rattled my too-safe suburban world when I was my protagonist Ronan’s age. There’s angst and an antiestablishment anthem and the sweetest tune I know by Suzanne Vega. All reflect what I hoped to capture in DREAMERS – one family’s fractured idealism, one girl’s longing to break free from her father’s rules, her ferocity, her guts, and her passion.
Better World – The Rave-Ups
Ronan’s father, Cap, calls “citizens” SSNs (for their social security numbers) and has rejected work, stability, and convention, bringing his family along for the ride. We don’t know why. When she’s little, Ronan and her brothers thinks he’s saying “assassins” – that’s how deeply he’s drilled his ethos into them. Better World distills his world view as Ro would see it as a girl. The Rave-Ups are a criminally-underrated band formed at Carnegie Mellon and probably best-known for their appearance on Molly Ringwald’s binder in Sixteen Candles and on stage in Pretty in Pink (she championed the group to John Hughes).
You Just Haven’t Earned it Yet, Baby – Kristy MacColl
MacColl’s coppery voice in this cover of the Smiths’ anthem is especially poignant to me, given her tragic early death. I adore her duet with The Pogues in “Fairytale of New York” and have sought out everything she recorded. This one’s both badass and aching, the perfect takedown of late-stage capitalism.
Birth, School, Work, Death – The Godfathers
And this one’s just badass. We used to scream the chorus in Berkeley all-ages clubs. If you weren’t hoarse the next morning, the night was a failure.
No school, no fixed address, no paycheck. As Ro grows up listening to Cap and Mama whispering behind the “vanilla wall” – a wall of stacked books that divides her parents’ section of the van from the four kids’– she starts to wonder why they live how they do. She knows only that Cap and Mama reject the middle pair of this song’s quartet (school and work).
What’s Important – Beat Happening
“Walk with me/Over the freeway/And down to the sea/That’s where we can always go/When we really wanna know/What’s Important”
It’s the Merrick family ethos.
Hey Jack Kerouac – 10,000 Maniacs
But cracks show early on in the novel. I love how Natalie Merchant’s vibrato skates over the bridge here. “When you were the brightest stars, who were the shadows?” That’s the conflict in “On the Road,” and in Ronan’s van, despite her life’s undeniable appeal. I kept a Post-it on my MacBook as I wrote this book, as a sort of epigraph: Who defines freedom for me? Ronan and Mama do all the dishes and cooking, and Ro’s solely responsible for raising her little brother. Her freedom on the road isn’t the same as her father’s.
Nobody’s Diary – Yahoo
Interstitial journal entries by an unidentified character propel the plot along. Plus I adore Alison Moyet. This song is pure longing.
This Must be the Place – Talking Heads
Playfulness sweetens idea-delivery – that’s the epitome of Talking Heads to me. Not in a sneaky spoonful-of-sugar way, but effortlessly. Charlie, Ro’s love interest, turns her onto Talking Heads. There’s diegetic music in the book and in Ro’s days, but father controls the radio dial. So when Charlie plunges into Ro’s world with her David Byrne posters and boom box, it’s a revelation for both girls.
Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You) – A Flock of Seagulls
Hairdo jokes can’t change this fact — Flock of Seagulls’ body of work is transcendent. A photograph of Ronan’s family goes on the wires (or goes viral, to use today’s term), threatening their way of life.
Whisper to a Scream (Birds Fly) – The Icicle Works
The essence of rage building, of unanswered questions coming to a boil. I like how the “birds fly” in the background tricks you into thinking this is a peaceful song.
Dreaming My Dreams With You – Cowboy Junkies
Part dreampop, part alt-country, however you want to classify Cowboy Junkies, Margo Timmins is hypnotic. This 1988 version is a cover of Waylon Jennings’ 1975 song.
California Dreaming – Denial
I’m pretty sure I know every cover of The Mamas and the Papas’ California Dreamin’ at this point. This one by Australian indie-rock group Denial is stripped to the bone. Bobby Womack and Jose Feliciano’s versions run a close second, along with Amason’s (tragically, I’m not the same Amason).
Fall On Me – R.E.M.
The four siblings, gathered on one of the Channel islands to memorialize their father, lean on each other when the world threatens. It’s a raw but beautiful song about healing.
Gypsy – Suzanne Vega
Vega wrote this when she was only eighteen. Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff. And so wise! It’s about loss, but there’s peace in it. Unsparing but uplifting—everything I hoped to accomplish in DREAMERS.
bestselling author of four novels from Graydon House/HarperCollins, Mason Doan grew up near San Francisco and now lives in Portland, Ore. “Doan’s characters leap off the page,” says Publishers Weekly. “Sure to please fans of Kristin Hannah,” says Library Journal. BookPage describes her work as “an artful combination of lyrical writing and twisting plot.”
Before turning to fiction, Amy worked for nearly two decades as a reporter & editor for The Oregonian, San Francisco Chronicle, Wired, Forbes, and other publications. She has an M.A. in Journalism from Stanford University and a B.A. in English from U.C. Berkeley.