Overview

The intersecting worlds of the two novellas in Rich People in Santa Barbra are worlds of privilege, worlds with eerie shadows beneath the surface. In Montecito Peak, Barbara Palmer, who is very rich--""I was born lucky""--is a good mother to fourteen-year-old Betsy, the guiding light of Bird of Paradise Books, an involved member of the Concours d'Elegance committee. But emotionally she's treading water. Her husband is a peevish alcoholic. He's a terrible father. No one would think less of her if she divorced him. But he would still always be in her life being a drag. Then one day Barbara falls in love with Mike Brooke. A reciprocated love. The odious husband has to go. In The Polo Club, Lydia Graham is a garden designer who grew up in Montecito. Her husband is a longboard surfer who's good at making money. He's a great father to their fifteen-year-old daughter. It's a happy marriage. Then Hunter Evans, a man whom Lydia knew when she was fourteen and he was thirty-two, returns to Santa Barbara. Socially connected, still terribly attractive--and a dubious character--he rents a condo at the Polo Club. He understands Lydia all too well, and suddenly he's a danger to her marriage. This cannot be allowed.

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9781644285367

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Reviews

""Elizabeth Gilchrist portrays the lives of characters with generational wealth in Santa Barbara's coastal city through meticulous descriptions of settings, bringing the characters to life as they navigate life's vicissitudes."" --Elsie Augustave, author of The Roving Tree ""These are two wonderful, engaging novellas about the all-but-secret world of Santa Barbara society of the not-so-distant past. These people are still around behind their gates and high hedges. Beneath the snobbery and scandal, there is something eerie, something noir. Elizabeth Gilchrist knew this world well, and she writes of it with sympathy, humor, and ruthless honesty. A great read."" --Kent Anderson, author of Sympathy for the Devil, Night Dogs, Green Sun, and Liquor, Guns & Ammo; Recipient of Prix Calibre 38 1998; Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award 2019; and Awardee of the 2019 Grand Prix de littérature policière

Elizabeth Gilchrist portrays the lives of characters with generational wealth in Santa Barbara's coastal city through meticulous descriptions of settings, bringing the characters to life as they navigate life's vicissitudes.--Elsie Augustave, author of The Roving Tree These are two wonderful, engaging novellas about the all-but-secret world of Santa Barbara society of the not-so-distant past. These people are still around behind their gates and high hedges. Beneath the snobbery and scandal, there is something eerie, something noir. Elizabeth Gilchrist knew this world well, and she writes of it with sympathy, humor, and ruthless honesty. A great read.--Kent Anderson, author of Sympathy for the Devil, Night Dogs, Green Sun, and Liquor, Guns & Ammo. A smell of eucalyptus and salt air, morning fogs, mountains in the distance, lust, adultery and unsolved murders. If Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles has been called ""the great wrong place,"" Elizabeth Gilchrist's Santa Barbara runs a close second. She is its bard. Her selection of period details is impeccable, her wit and judgment playful and subtle. Her wealthy characters, seemingly proper and socially responsible, listen to the best jazz, eat the most sensible food, drive the hippest cars, and move in an atmosphere of entitled amorality and dread. --Phillip Lopate

Author Information

ELIZABETH GILCHRIST was born in Santa Barbara, California and lived much of her life there. She was head room mother at Marymount School, and an editor of Destination Wine Country Magazine. Neither of her two previous novels, Your Cheatin' Heart and Second Chances, was set in Santa Barbara. Rich People in Santa Barbara is her Santa Barbara book, the one she's always wanted to write. She now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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