I remember watching “Little Miss Sunshine” in a downtown Ventura movie theater a number of years ago and the audience erupted with applause and cheers at the dramatic pageant arrival scene when Steve Carell’s dad character, driving the family in a bright yellow VW Microbus, misses the freeway exit and has to take an overpass to turn around…
…and the brief on-screen “star” is our 101 California Street exit – only four blocks away from the movie theater we were watching in – with the high-rise Crowne Plaza beach hotel in the background.
If you are at all like me you feel a similar thrill whenever you see Ventura in a Hollywood role. For example, our downtown in “Swordfish” or several local spots in “Two Jakes” or our beloved pier in “God Bless America” to name three more.
I imagine it’s how Monterey’s “Cannery Row” neighborhood must have felt to be immortalized in John Steinbeck’s novel of the same name. Less famously, the fictional coastal town of Cabrillo hints strongly of Ventura – and the old Star-Free Press – in my predecessor Chuck Thomas’ novel “Getting Off The Map.”
Well, a new book has me smiling and cheering for featuring Ventura in its pages. Actually, the fictional beach town is named Buena Vista, but make no mistake it is Buenaventura. From the beach and pier to Main Street and the foothills, its author – Dallas Woodburn – pays homage to her dear hometown through and through.
My daughter’s second novel, “Thanks, Carissa, For Ruining My Life” from Immortal Works, has just been published and – Boasting Dad Warning – instantly soared to No. 1 on Amazon’s list of Young Adult New Releases.
The story centers around two teenagers, Rose and Brad, who travel parallel journeys of self-discovery, empowerment, and acceptance after popular “queen bee” Carissa tears apart their lives. In Hollywood parlance, it’s “Brittany Runs a Marathon” meets “Some Kind of Wonderful.”
A wonderful kind of thing some writers like to do is scatter “Easter eggs” that only certain readers will find and recognize. “Carissa” has a basketful of such hidden treasures. For example, Tony’s Taco Shop is obviously Snapper Jack’s; Nature’s Grill makes a cameo as Nature’s Café; and in a role encompassing its own storyline is the Buena Vista radio station WAVE-104.3 that is, clear as a Santa Ana wind-blown summer day, Ventura’s KVTA-1590 where Dallas has been a guest on esteemed radio personality Tom Spence’s morning show. The observant reader will find more brightly dyed local gems.
Books are time machines and while “Carissa” will surely transport most readers back to high school, it carries me to when Dallas was only 6 or 7 and already dreaming of becoming an author. In my mind’s eye I can still see her, sitting tall on her knees, in a chair at the kitchen table and typing on her great-grandfather’s restored Underwood No. 5 typewriter. Punching the QWERTY keys, firmly with only her right index finger, she let her imagination soar.
There was modern magic in that 1911 heirloom: in second grade, Dallas had a poem – “Peanut Butter Surprise” about a PB&J sandwich made with a jellyfish because the grape jelly ran out – published in The Star’s “Kids Corner” feature and in fifth grade self-published a book of short stories and poems that sold 2,000 copies.
The little girl’s big dreams kept coming true with a play produced off-Broadway, a John Steinbeck Creative Writing Fellowship, and a handful of awards for her debut novel “The Best Week That Never Happened” two years ago.
Thanks to “Carissa” her writing life remains charmed, not ruined.
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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn
Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.
Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com