Are We All Doomed to Become Our Parents?
Terrified he’s becoming just like his father, Wyatt Lewis, a disillusioned millennial, breaks up with his fiancée to chase his childhood dream – a fresh start in Southern California.
Once in San Diego, Wyatt reunites with an old friend, Summer Harrison, while falling hard for the elusive and free-spirited, Leah Murphy. Summer and Leah show Wyatt a dazzling world littered with lavish speakeasies, egregious drug use, and overpriced cocktails. Surrounded by fake glamor and stuck in a terrible corporate job, Wyatt’s escape quickly turns into his worst nightmare.
Overworked, alone, and filled with regret, the aspiring writer spirals down a self-destructive path that forces him to confront the violent past he ran away to California to forget.
In his raw, hilarious, and dark debut novel, Brian Price showcases our world, on the verge of the COVID-19 pandemic, through the eyes of a sarcastic and stubborn narrator as he attempts to drown his family’s demons.
Are We All Doomed to Become Our Parents?
Terrified he’s becoming just like his father, Wyatt Lewis, a disillusioned millennial, breaks up with his fiancée to chase his childhood dream – a fresh start in Southern California.
Once in San Diego, Wyatt reunites with an old friend, Summer Harrison, while falling hard for the elusive and free-spirited, Leah Murphy. Summer and Leah show Wyatt a dazzling world littered with lavish speakeasies, egregious drug use, and overpriced cocktails. Surrounded by fake glamor and stuck in a terrible corporate job, Wyatt’s escape quickly turns into his worst nightmare.
Overworked, alone, and filled with regret, the aspiring writer spirals down a self-destructive path that forces him to confront the violent past he ran away to California to forget.
In his raw, hilarious, and dark debut novel, Brian Price showcases our world, on the verge of the COVID-19 pandemic, through the eyes of a sarcastic and stubborn narrator as he attempts to drown his family’s demons.
March 19, 2020
California was over.
I gave one last yank on the rope that pinned my suitcases to the roof of my car. The rope wasn’t as tight as I would have liked, but that’s why I put the least valuable of my things in the suitcases.
I squeezed inside the car. My front seat was so close to the dash that I was practically fucking my steering wheel. No matter how hard I pushed my back against the boxes crammed behind me, they refused to budge.
I took a deep breath and brought the engine to life.
A few recovering addicts waved goodbye from the sidewalk as they lit panic cigarettes. I cranked up the window when their smoke invaded my car. That’s right. Cranked. I couldn’t afford automatic windows.
I glided down Seventh Avenue past a halfway house, two decaying hotels, a few closet-size apartments with rent prices well over two thousand dollars, a bail bond office, a dirty rotten law school, a homeless encampment, and the largest Scientology center in the city. There was nothing beautiful about the neighborhood. Except that it was mine.
I stopped at the last traffic light before the I-5 South ramp. That’s when a breaking news alert interrupted the music on the radio.
“Governor Gavin Newsom issues the first-ever lockdown in response to the outbreak of COVID-19 in the state of California.”
I muted it.
There was no point in listening to what I already knew.
The traffic light turned from red to green.
Everything I could ever want was in California.
I turned left to leave it all behind.
The tarp covering the suitcases whipped through the air as I accelerated onto the highway. The suitcases stayed firm. I pushed harder on the gas.
Silhouettes of palm trees raced by me in the darkness. Even now, I couldn’t help but smile.
My phone ruined the moment.
I didn’t want to answer the call.
But I did.
“What took you so long to pick up?” my father asked.
Most people say hello.
“I’ve been a little busy.”
“You wouldn’t be rushing like this if you left days ago. Like I said.”
Helpful, as always.
“I’ve planned it all out,” I said.
“Like your plan to move to California. How’d that one work out?”
No one could have predicted this.
“I should be home in a few days. I’ll call you when I get to Arizona.”
“You need to listen to me,” my father said. “There’s going to be more lockdowns. People are acting nuts. This is serious.”
“I’m going to focus on the road.”
“Wyatt. No. Listen.”
“Gotta go. There’s a lot of traffic. Bye.”
I hung up and looked ahead of me.
Minus a few electric-powered cars, the freeway was empty.
My phone danced in my cup holder.
My father.
Of course.
I let it ring to voicemail.
He called back.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six times before finally giving up.
I’d deal with him soon enough.
Three days to be exact.
But I wasn’t sure if I had that much time.
What if the cell phone towers stopped working?
What if I couldn’t rely on technology?
I-10 to I-20 to I-30 to I-40 to I-81 to I-95.
Commit the route to memory.
Just in case.
I-10 to I-20 to I-30 to I-40 to I-81 to I-95.
Arizona to Texas across middle America before landing in the country’s armpit, New Jersey. All other routes took me through Ohio, which already had strict travel restrictions. I didn’t want to take a chance driving through there.
I-10 to I-20 to I-30 to I-40 to I-81 to I-95.
What if things got worse?
What if I got stuck in another state because of a new lockdown order?
Where would I stay?
I couldn’t afford living at a hotel.
I-10 to I-20 to I-30 to I-40 to I-81 to I-95.
What if I got sick?
The medical bill would kill me.
I-10 to I-20 to I-30 to I-40 to I-81 to I-95.
My phone startled me when it screamed to life.
My father refused to quit.
I had to give him that.
But it wasn’t him calling.
The word “Leah” lit up my screen.
I thought I could avoid her until I got back to Jersey.
Wrong again.
My phone continued to ring.
Without Leah, I would have never made it to California.
And now, she was calling to convince me to stay.
I couldn’t answer.
Because I wasn’t ready to say goodbye.
Wyatt embarks on the scariest adventure for an adult as he moves across the country seeking what he has always longed for: California. In a pre-pandemic existential dread, Wyatt constantly bounces between the pounding need of living in California and returning home to New Jersey where his family awaits with “I told you so.” written on their faces and threatening to slip out of their mouths.
Whichever path you’ve taken in life, and whichever experiences you had before the pandemic decided to hit our lives, there is at least a piece of us in Last Chance California. As Wyatt embraces his journey of moving to his dream city, he is hit by the reality that it is not as easy as it looked, which floods his heart with an anguish that he is not ready to assume or admit to anyone…not even himself.
With vivid and realistic perspectives of adulthood and the constant strikes of disappointments that may befall us, Price manages to englobe the hardships of encountering an adventure for which we have not exactly prepared in a riveting tale of mishaps and wild late nights. Although Wyatt’s plans did not turn out as expected, as a reader who is also looking to get away in this exact moment of my life, I found a streak of hope and comfort in a character that fights for his dream against all his instincts to prove to himself—and inevitably to others—that he is where he is supposed to be and that his dream is just as valid as any other.
Through the briefness of his expressions and the fine simplicity of his interactions with his friends and co-workers, we get a clear yet intriguing sense of who Wyatt is and the reasons behind his choices. Brian Price succeeds in keeping his audience in the dark of the occult aspects of his life as much as Wyatt keeps his friends from that, too, letting us explore his personality on our own before revealing much.
A book for those who are lost, for those who have been lost and now found themselves, and for those who are in the middle of an adventure that has surprised them in more ways than one, Last Chance California delves into the complexity of one’s past, the endurance of one’s present, and the hope for one’s future.