NOA SILVER at Books Inc. Berkeley
About the book: This millennial bildungsroman follows Elena’s journey in the SF Bay Area from an idealistic Teach for America teacher to a disillusioned project manager at a tech company. Amid the Occupy and Me Too movements, the 2016 election, and California’s ever-worsening fire season, Elena must ultimately reconcile the person she envisioned herself to be and the person she actually is.
Having grown up on stories of her mother's wild youth in California, Elena Berg relocates from New England to the Bay Area in 2011 for a placement as an English teacher with Teach for America. Once there, she is eager to inspire a love of poetry and literature in her diverse but underprivileged students. Her own grandfather—a Holocaust survivor—was a storyteller and teacher who touched the lives of his students for years to come. Elena’s mother followed in his footsteps, leaving behind the hippie lifestyle of her twenties to become a university professor.
But Elena quickly finds herself feeling disconnected from teaching, unable to inspire her students, and before long, she grows disillusioned with her career. She transitions to a role in an education technology startup—though she questions her decision, her motivations, and her values.
Coming of age between the Occupy and #MeToo movements and against the backdrop of the 2016 election and California's ever-worsening fire season, Elena reckons with California as she imagined it and California as it really is. As she does so, she must also ultimately reconcile the person she envisioned herself to be with the person she actually is.
“A novel of deep questions and personal growth, California Dreaming reckons with the gap between expectations and experience.”
—Foreword Reviews
“A meditative novel composed with psychological subtlety.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A splendid debut novel—confessional, engaging, honest. I very much look forward to reading more from this writer.”
—Lynn Freed, author of The Romance of Elsewhere
“In this tender debut novel, Noa Silver takes the reader back in time to one of those magical eras in Berkeley when young people, powered by their own idealism and multigenerational dreams, believed they could change the world. Fast-moving and unflaggingly engaging, California Dreaming tells a coming of age story that we need more than ever to hold close to our hearts.”
—Barbara Quick, author of What Disappears
“California Dreaming is a spectacular debut, shot through with wit, pathos, and wisdom and teeming with sentences so alive they seem to be reaching out to grab the reader by the lapel. At once a page-turning bildungsroman and an insightful commentary on the Bay Area in the twenty-first century, this book heralds the arrival of a talented writer whose work we're bound to see on our shelves again and again. To read this book is to love it.”
—Molly Antopol, author of The UnAmericans
“A rich, insightful story about an East Coast transplant attempting to make a life within her own personal myth of California. Full of bittersweet longing, hard-won wisdom, and a pursuit for connection amidst personal and social change, California Dreaming is a pitch-perfect portrait of the Bay Area in the midst of the last tech boom.”
—Michael David Lukas, author of The Last Watchman of Old Cairo
“I was so impressed and moved by this elegantly written and intimate book. Noa Silver's California Dreaming is an excellent first novel and an important addition to contemporary California literature.”
—Peter Orner, author of Maggie Brown & Others
Noa Silver was born in Jerusalem and raised between Scotland and Maine. After receiving her BA in English and American literature and language from Harvard University, Noa lived and taught English as a Second Language on Namdrik-part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands and the smallest inhabited atoll in the world. She later completed her MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University and then worked as an editor on various oral history projects, ranging from an archive documenting the Partition of India and Pakistan to a cancer researcher telling the stories of trauma experienced by cancer survivors. Noa lives in Berkeley, California, with her husband, Jack, and their two daughters, Alma and Leila.
