Anyone who grew up in the late-70s or early-80s will recognize themselves, or at least someone they knew, in Adam Langer's Crossing California.
Set in the suburbs of Chicago, Crossing California tracks the ever-increasingly entwined lives of several families as they struggle with unrest, infidelity, raging hormones, and passing history class.
Romance and heartbreak abound not only between the teenagers, but also their parents, who prove that even though you are an adult, relationships don't necessarily become easier. And being an adult doesn't automatically mean you know any better than you did when you were in high school.
Langer has steeped Crossing California so much in the kitsch we think of as being evocative of that era, and the story becomes a bit too self-aware in its name dropping of foods and beverages, songs, movies, and politicians of the time. The fact that there is a 12-page glossary of terms at the end of the story, defining such references as "Astroturf," "Cheap Trick," "Richard Nixon," and "Trans Am," leads me to believe that Langer seemed bent on writing a companion to "That 70s Show."
If Langer had left out the glossary, I could almost forgive the heavy-handedness of the "period piece." However, I can't hold that much of a grudge, since I really did enjoy this story and feel that Langer captured with a stunning clarity the emotional vortex of teen angst that is high school.
