column Booktails
Yerba Buena by Nina LaCour
Book and Cocktail Club
“I lost nearly everything, and then I built something better.”
28 • Benicia Magazine
n Cooper Mickelson Say hello to Booktail's first repeat author, Nina LaCour. If you enjoyed reading Watch Over Me with us last year, you'll definitely want to pick up LaCour's debut adult novel, Yerba Buena. Yerba Buena is a beautiful, modern love story, but it's also a refreshing look into how a "romance" novel doesn't have to focus solely on longing looks and stomachs full of butterflies. LaCour's newest novel is a charmingly messy coming-of-age story centered around two women struggling with emotional baggage as they work to understand themselves more intimately. When we meet Sara Foster, she is a deeply feeling sixteen-year-old girl learning to navigate a world without her
mother. Sara's life is far from easy with an absent father, a brother who needs her support, and a secret relationship with one of the girls in her class. Things only get more complicated for Sara when her girlfriend is found dead in the Russian River. Unable to deal with the losses threatening to destroy her, Sara decides to run away. With nothing but the clothes on her back and the $300 she earned from her father's sleazy friend, Sara and a strange boy who's been living in his car begin their drive from Geurnville to Los Angeles. Years later, Sara is a talented bartender, praised for her creative cocktails, beauty, and the air of mystery surrounding her. Across Los Angeles, Emilie DuBois is stuck in limbo. After
