So L.A.

Beautiful Magdalena de la Cruz, hailing from California's San Joaquin Valley (as memorialized in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath) breezed through UC Berkeley and built an empire selling designer water. She’d never felt awkward or unattractive…until she moved to Los Angeles. In L.A., where “everything smells like acetone and Errol Flynn,” Magdalena attempts to reinvent herself as a geographically appropriate bombshell—with rhinestones, silicone and gin—as she seeks an escape from her unraveling marriage and the traumatic death of her younger brother. Magdalena’s Los Angeles is glitzy and glamorous but also a landscape of the absurd. Her languidly lyrical voice provides a travel guide for a city of make-believe, where even Hollywood insiders feel left out.

“Electric, funny, lively, edged prose illuminates the pages of So L.A.-Hoida knows how to write sentences and characters that bite right into you.”
-Aimee Bender, author of The Girl in the Flammable Skirt & The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“In So L.A. Bridget Hoida has crafted that rarest of books: intelligent, gorgeously written—and, best of all, fun. The charming, witty and slightly off-kilter voice of narrator Magdalena de la Cruz brings to mind the writing of Nabokov—but in a distinctly California style. Hoida’s sharp, exquisite prose awed me, and brought me to both laughter and tears.”
-Shawna Yang Ryan, author of Water Ghosts

“Bridget is a rare thing-an original writer with a unique voice. Her writing is ironic, satirical, smart, sexy and deeply tender. This is a book Joan Didion will wish she’d written!”
-Chris Abani, author of Song for Night & Graceland

“Bridget Hoida has crafted a remarkably fine novel. The language of this work is fresh, surprising and relentless. The novel captures California, it captures the culture, it captures this one woman’s life and it captured me. This is strong stuff from a strong talent. Hoida’s voice is here to stay.”
-Percival Everett, author of Assumption & Erasure