Adams's literary precedents would seem to be those cited by Liza—"the heavy Victorians, Mrs. Gaskell and Gissing and Trollope, Dickens—and further down the line, Henry James and Edith Wharton, Elizabeth Bowen—and of course Virginia Woolf." The Victorians provide the backdrop of a social world driven by manners and the hidden imperatives of the human heart, combined with the modern writers' emphasis on motivation and introspection. The California family saga set against the backdrop of the 1980s was popularized in Howard Fast's Lavette family chronicles, The Immigrants (1977; see separate entry), Second Generation (1979), The Establishment (1980), and TheLegay (1981), and tales of fast-living Valley girls take their roots from Jacqueline Suzann's Valley of the Dolls (1966; see separate entry). But Adams brought a new look to California characters by highlighting the growing recognition of a specifically female psyche rooted in relationships and contexts rather than...