Introduction

For fans of Ann Patchett, Kristin Hannah, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Barbara Kingsolver, and Zadie Smith...

Miami Beach, Florida, 1981: A small windfall relocates Sienna and Siddhartha Jones and their charismatic and capricious father Jackson to a condemned mansion on the water. The siblings are forbidden to go to school and left to live off the land as Jackson uses their new home to create a communal cult. Living amidst the vagrant seekers who take up residence in Jackson's utopia, Sienna and Siddhartha are forced to raise themselves in a carefree, chaotic oasis. Sienna and Siddhartha strive to stick together and survive--through puberty and politics, bags of weed and burried treasure, first love and fickle friends, mahjongg and mosh pits, from Miami to New York to Morocco--to discover the enduring power of love in a family of lunatics...

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Excerpt

CHAPTER 1: Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes, 1979 

Jackson approached us on a wave of incense smoke undercut by a bittersweet gush of marijuana. He plopped down between us where we sat watching “Captain Kangaroo” on the wicker sectional left by some hopeful woman who wasn’t our mother, but who might have intended to stay. 

“Hey, you two munchies,” he said, his smile as dilated as his pupils. “Who’s in the mood for an adventure?” And, like magic, the whole room brimmed with mischief. 

Siddhi raced to shut the TV, for if we hesitated, if we whimpered or hedged, it might be weeks before he asked again. I was six, Siddhartha five years old, and we loved our father intensely, the youngest kind of love, unflappable and fortified by need. We were lemmings, game to march blindly over the cliffs of his whim. 

“What’s the ’venture?” Siddhi wondered, blinking. Siddhi was dreamy and lithe, but with the perfect amount of baby pudge, too cute to gaze upon without that painful yearning you get with puppies in pet store windows. 

“Can we please go to Africa?” I asked. Africa, the continent, had become my recent obsession. I planned to rule over a smallish kingdom curated from the bounds of my extremely limited frame of reference: the dusty box of National Geographics that came with our rental, a half-day visit to the Renaissance Faire at Vizcaya, Rikki Tikki Tavi, and Babar the elephant. My version of Africa was a mini utopia where animals wore fancy clothing, and I was their queen. 

“Pack up and meet me in the kitchen. It’s adventure time!” Jackson said and thrust his long, tan arms into the air in triumph. “Remember the rule: if it doesn’t fit in your backpack, then it’s—“

“Bullship!” Siddhi shouted. 

“Bullshit-t-t, Siddhi.” I corrected him on our way upstairs. 

“Right!” He grinned. “BullSHIT!” 

We packed toys and necklaces, Siddhi’s Teddy bear, Murphy the Great, and two pairs of socks (in case of skating or bowling). Jackson wore purple velour shorts and a rainbow spiral tie-dye, and he stood at the counter eating peanut butter out of the jar. His black curly hair met his beard to form a mane around his face. He took one look at us all strapped up with our backpacks and sandals and laughed so earnestly that he had to lean over and spit peanut butter into the sink. Siddhi and I were both still naked. 

Breakfast was a fresh box of Cheerios, purchased at the minimart, where Jackson sunk a few gallons into Mellow Yellow, his ’64 Thunderbird. He sometimes told tales of his years traveling in Mellow Yellow, driving from gig to gig, meeting new friends, and staying in their fancy mansions. His stories always began with him befriending some rich person and ended with him living with that person for a little while. He only had great days and bad days, both sometimes stretching for weeks or months in either direction. 

Today looked to be a great one. 

By noon, we might be anywhere from Key Largo to Kalamazoo. It was a crisp September Tuesday, cloudy, minus the usual haze, and since we never went to school, it was the same as any other day. Jackson put the top down so Siddhi and I could sit up high in the back, crunching handfuls of Cheerios and waving like pageant queens, looking out for better views of the coming hours. Jackson accelerated onto the highway, forcing us to drop down into the seats and reach our hands over our heads to push against the whooshing air. And he drove for what felt like hours, eventually pulling off the highway and turning east toward the ocean. 

If he’d told us we were headed for the moon, we would have believed that Mellow Yellow could sputter into space. 

He parked along a barren stretch of grassy park that ran parallel to the beach for as far as I could see. “Here we are,” Jackson told Siddhi and me, who sat drizzled in itchy crumbs from funneling the remnant Cheerio-powder into our mouths. “And no business for me until later!” 

I felt it in my stomach when Jackson mentioned his business. Different from the dads on TV, he never wore a suit, held a briefcase, or kissed a pretty mother on his way out the door. He came and went at all hours with any number of emotions. There was no way to predict or prepare for who he’d be or what would happen to us. 

We peed behind the car, mounted our packs, and tried to catch up with Jackson as he crossed the grass toward the expanse of golden sand. 

“So, what’s the ’venture?” Siddhi asked. 

“This is it! We are going to walk on this beach until we’re so pooped that we just can’t walk anymore, and then we’ll cool out and find a place to camp for the night wherever we end up! How do yah like that?” As he strode ahead of us, the dark hair on his head, arms, and legs luffed in the wind. 

Heavy gray-black clouds moved in over the sun, whose rays seared out here and there, begging to be seen. As we continued our march, the ocean grew feistier, the sky went fully to nimbus, and raindrops began to polka dot the sand. 

“How much longer, Jackson?” Siddhi whined. I wanted to know as badly as he did, but I felt very aware that big girls don’t complain. 

“Who knows? That’s the adventure.” 

“That’s the ’venture,” Siddhi repeated, aping Jackson’s shrug. 

We passed a line of mansions on the beach. I chose a window in each that would be my mother’s chamber and imagined her looking out at us. The wind picked up. Waves crashed. Cold rain pelted our faces and hair. I put myself in charge of doling out the sleeve of crackers I’d grabbed from our kitchen cupboard in case of no lunch. 

“Hey, I got one,” Siddhi said. “How come the sky gets all the other colors, ’cept green?” 

“Ooh…That’s true, Siddhi. You’re so smart,” I said in my most maternal voice and threw an arm around his neck, both to show my approval and to use him as a crutch. 

Siddhi’s teeth chattered. He had barometric lips, and since they weren’t yet blue, I knew we were not too cold to have to go indoors. With new people, Siddhi could sit silently for hours, taking them in and memorizing their details, letting his questions accumulate for safer circumstances, but alone with us, he just asked them whenever he felt like it. 

We had to trot to keep up with Jackson’s stride, listening hard to follow his answer: “...and that may be, but really, it’s all about energy, man. Energy powers it all, all life…and the God-like substance that makes it all possible…everything from a car engine to your soul…” He poked into Siddhi’s belly to make him giggle. “Energy is indestructible. Can’t be destroyed, only changed into heat, and then heat changed back into energy, back and forth, eternally. Energy is forever, and we run on energy; therefore, we are forever. The only sure thing is change, back and forth, eternal, immortal. Understand, munchies?” We didn’t really, but we always nodded either way. “And, God is energy, eternal and immortal, and everything!” Jackson looked up and opened his mouth to the rain, but I could tell his speech was far from over. He went on for gallons past my fill line for new information. “Isn’t this great?” he shouted over the pelting rain. “God is giving us a drink!” He stuck his tongue out to catch more, and we did likewise. The cold raindrops stung at first, but once we were fully drenched, it stopped hurting and got fun again.

I noticed Siddhi’s lips bluing up at the edges, but they stayed pinkish in the center. “Are we almost there, Jackson?” 

“Funny you should ask,” Jackson said and pointed down the beach. Past his finger in the rainy distance lay an oasis of swaying palm trees surrounding a massive building. “That right there is where we’re headed!” 

The rain soaked my long hair down into sopping curtains, heavy on my shoulders, and I wasn’t sure if the goose bumps rising over my arms and legs were the fault of the chilly wind or the prospect of our visit to the castle that stood before us. 

Jackson veered left, down a side street off the beach, and pulled over under a flapping awning. The wind whistled, impressed, as he expertly lit the joint he’d fished out of his backpack, inhaled sharply, and then exhaled a twisting burl of smoke. Siddhi and I stood side-by-side, waiting. 

“Well, I tell you what, I didn’t know it was going to pour,” Jackson said, holding in his second hit. He blew it out and coughed a few times, “but it just makes the adventure wilder. Right, Siddhartha?” He and Siddhi exchanged smiles. I put on a smile, too, but no one was looking at me. 

Siddhi’s white-blond hair pasted itself all over his face and neck, and his lips pushed toward indigo and parted to expose the empty lower gum where, one week before, I removed his first loose tooth by tying it to a string attached to our bedroom doorknob and slamming the door. I got the idea from The Little Rascals. It was bloody, but it sure did the job. 

We chased Jackson as he strode along the street, eventually veering to his right and coming around the corner to reveal the grand castle façade. 

“The Breakers,” Jackson announced with a revelatory hand gesture. 

The Breakers must have been twenty windows across with towering turrets at either side, flags raised and flapping at their peaks, and a long driveway lined all the way with palm trees. Inside the entry doors, the lobby was loaded with massive Persian rugs strewn beneath a dozen extra-fancy sofas and chairs rimmed with golden fringes. Old paintings and gilded mirrors covered the walls leading up to a ceiling muraled with animals, clouds, urns of fruit, and flying baby angels. 

I took a moment to pretend I was the Queen of Africa, casually coming home after a day out just queening around. 

When Jackson addressed the man behind the glossy wooden counter, he said, “Hey, man. My associate left a key for me. The name’s Gordon Lightfoot…” I elbowed Siddhi about the made-up name, but he was looking at the ceiling and didn’t appear to notice the elbow or the lie. 

“Certainly, Mr. Lightfoot,” the man answered, and he handed Jackson an envelope and keys. Four men traversed the lobby carrying deck chairs and beach umbrellas from outside.

Everyone looked steadfast, rushed, even worried. 

David. That was the word. They said many things to one another but always mentioned David. The only famous David I knew of was David Bowie, one of Jackson’s—and hence mine and Siddhi’s—favorite rockers. “Think David Bowie’s here tonight?” I asked Siddhi. 

And Siddhi threw it to Jackson. “Are we here for a concert of David Bowie?” Jackson didn’t hear. He took each of our hands and walked so quickly that we wound up next to each other behind him. “Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes,” Siddhi sang. “Hey, that's a good song for when you’re shivering,” he said. 

I giggled and joined in, “Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes…” 

Jackson walked down a wide hallway to a shop with tennis racquets and golf clubs in the windows. “Ha, there we go,” he said. He dropped our hands and told us, “Go pick out some dry clothes.” 

It took no time for me to choose a pretty tennis dress. They only had one that was pink, and it was the biggest one. The arm holes went down below my ribs, but the skirt looked like an upside-down coffee filter and flared out all the way when I twirled. Siddhi liked the flaring too and picked the same dress in blue. “For boys,” he qualified. Jackson grabbed a shirt and a pair of pants, and without paying much attention, he added the dresses I handed him, tossing them all up on the counter without even checking. I remembered he shopped this way and got angry with myself for missing my chance to add in a pair of socks with pompom balls on the back and a couple of new T-shirts with no holes or stains. 

“My word, ya’ll went and got yerselves caught in Hurricane David!” said the lady behind the counter. She handed Jackson the shopping bag and his change. And she winked at him, smashed her fingers into the side of her hair to scoop it over her shoulder toward him. I copied the move in the store mirror, but my wet hair flopped back down. 

“You’re kidding me,” Jackson purred, leaning in with his hand on the counter. The lady looked older than Jackson’s thirty-two years of age and much, much older than the ladies Jackson took with us to Wolfie’s Restaurant for breakfast sometimes. 

She had red hair, red lipstick, and red fingernails. I could see that she really liked Jackson, because she licked her lips and then smiled before answering, “Oh, yes! The eye’s meant to pass over tonight.” 

Jackson puffed his chest and propped his fists on his hips in a Peter Pan adventure stance. “A hurricane? Huh! What do you think of that?” 

I wanted so much to tell him that I thought it was exciting but also dangerous, and to ask him if we were safe in this hotel, and if they would have some food and water for us, because Siddhi got very cranky when he got too hungry, and was there a nice place for Siddhi to maybe have a nap? And whose “eye” was passing over? An eye into heaven where maybe our mother could get a peek at us? But he wasn’t really asking. He grabbed the shopping bags and headed for the shimmery elevators. 

The hotel room was a palace chamber in miniature, every bit of it dressed in opulent fabric, wallpaper, golden tassels, and trim. The bed practically filled the space, leaving only a little U-shape of fancy carpet for walking around. 

Siddhi wasted no time flipping on the TV. He dialed through a few channels of fuzzy snow, stopped for a few seconds on the rainbow-beep emergency tester, then he flipped to what I thought was “General Hospital,” but was actually just a Sanka commercial starring a lady who looked like Monica Quartermaine. He flipped almost to the end of the dial before we got lucky with some opening credits. “Godzilla! Right on. This is a good one,” Jackson assured us, and we sat hip to hip on the edge of the bed, watching. 

Jackson showered and changed into his new clothes: a pair of beige slacks and a white shirt with a collar, three buttons, and two embroidered palm trees on the breast pocket, that I’d laid out neatly for him over the arms of our elegant chair. He peeked out the curtains. 

“Whoa, the storm's really mounting…” Jackson picked up the phone and dialed once around the rotary. “I’d like to make a room-to-room call, three oh two to ten twenty-two…” He sat on the edge of the bed. “Heeeey, brother,” he said into the receiver, “…here, in the room…yep, and a couple new strains to check out…fuck, yeah, frost resistant…no, no, beautiful…right on!” 

Siddhi watched the movie, and I watched Jackson dig through and readjust the contents of his backpack, which were mostly wrapped packages filled with what he told us was expensive tobacco. He pulled the drawstring, closed the flap, buckled it in place, and thrust it back over his shoulder. The storm brought the kind of early darkness that made every noise a creak and every shadow a ghost. The wind howled. 

“Time for business!” 

“No, Jackson,” Siddhi whined, tensing up. His lips were almost back to pink. He hated it worse than I did when Jackson did his business and left us alone, and I worried what would happen if he had one of his famous tantrums in the hotel. “Stay and watch with us, please!” I put an arm around Siddhi, administering the strong squeeze that told him to calm down, and he got the hint and relaxed a little into my hold. 

“No can do, muncharoo. But do you like the room? Nice, right?” We nodded. “Me too. So, cross your fingers because if tonight works out, we are getting a palace of our own!” I didn’t know what he meant. Would we be living in The Breakers forever more? Were we moving to Africa? I had a day’s worth of questions, but I knew from the wild shine in Jackson’s eyes that it was a bad time for curiosity. He jiggled the room key and shoved it in his pocket.

“Hungry?” We answered with more vigorous nods. “Cool. Here,” he handed me some cash, “order room service.” On his way out the door, he leaned back and added, “Oh hey, get me a medium-rare filet mignon and whatever you munchies want, okay?” 

We fought over the room service menu. I won by pushing Siddhi down, and he cried for a minute but then resumed watching the movie. The menu had no pictures, so I dialed the rotary once all the way around like I’d seen Jackson do, and a lady answered. 

“Hi, my name is Sienna Shiva Karma Jones, and I’m six and a half, and I live in room 302.” 

I heard her giggle and then, “Yes, Miss, how can we be of service?” I pictured the lady from the gift shop as if a Stepford army of middle-aged redheads ran the whole hotel… I tried to sound like a queen. 

“Yeah, so, me and my brother want to, please, order three medium-rare filet min-yons, please.” 

“Three medium-rare filets.” 

“Min-yons, yes, sure. And, yes, please, we also need plates and forks, please.” 

Siddhi bounced on the end of the bed and shouted, “And a Sprite with seven cherries!” 

“Please,” I corrected. “Oh, and one more thing, please, um, what is filet min-yon?” 

Rain beat sideways into the window glass, and I pushed on it to make sure it would hold. Outside, the palm trees blew wildly, like punch dummies all the way down to the ground and back up and over the other way. Giant lips of white foam swallowed and then spit back out the whole length of the beach. I shut the curtains to block out the fright, and as I did, the golden rope tieback slipped down to the carpet. My tummy twisted with worry about what happened to Jackson. I wondered how we could pay the bill if they told us to leave the hotel before he returned. I decided I would be less worried if I had that length of golden rope. Maybe I could find a place to sell it if I needed money, and if it didn’t come to that, then it would always be a memory of how brave I was ordering the room service, cutting our min-yons (which were nothing more than fancy steak) with such a sharp knife, and not crying about the ghost wailing outside our window. Even though it made me a bad girl, and I knew it, I grabbed the tieback and stuffed it into the bottom of my backpack. I had no other choice, really. There was too much already in my life that I didn’t remember. 

“Where’s Daddy, CeeCee?” Siddhi asked, rubbing Murphy the Great’s paw, like he did, over his worried eyebrow. 

“He’s doing business,” I told Siddhi, “Like always.” I didn’t have the words to explain what I knew about our family. We lived a vagrant, furtive sort of life, always potentially grand but shaded by outsiders who disapproved of things too ethereal for them to imagine. I believed Jackson’s theory that if they all just unpacked their bullshit, they would have space, like we did, for magic, and I saw myself as some sort of child enchantress in their margins. 

Siddhi sucked on Murphy the Great’s nose, and I worked my fingers through the tangles in his long hair and listened to his breathing until he was sleeping, and then I fell asleep.

I woke to a whisper. “You up, munch?” Jackson shook my shoulder a little and then leaned over me to the other side of the bed and did the same to Siddhi. 

“Is the ‘eye’ opening?” I asked. 

“Put your clothes back on,” he said. “I had a big night!” 

The bed was warm from sleep, our room thick with quiet, but when Jackson said get dressed and come, we little moons had no recourse but to orbit. Delighted that Jackson had returned, Siddhi scurried over to the chair and slipped his tennis dress over his head. Jackson laughed. “Where did you get that dress, man?” Siddhi opened his mouth to answer, but Jackson had already moved on. “Check this out,” he said, and he opened his backpack to reveal more stacked bundles of cash than they kept in suitcases in the movies. He often returned from business smiling into newfound money, but never a whole duffel bag full.

Jackson laughed, hummed, and gaped. He appeared to love the money in his bag, which made me wish I could open the window and dump it all out into the storm, sending it to flutter and flap away like the migrating Monarch butterflies in our magazines. Instead, I waited until Jackson and Siddhi both went to the bathroom, went for the bag, and took as many stacks of cash as I could fit in the remaining space in my backpack, to save, for the bad times, when Jackson wasn’t all wide smiles and new clothes. 

And after he checked three times to ensure that the room was locked, we rode down the elevator… view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

From the author:

1. Who was your favorite character? What character did you identify with the most? Were there any characters that you disliked? Why?

2. Was there any part of the plot or aspects of the characters that frustrated or upset you? If so, why?

3. How thought-provoking did you find the book? Did the book change your opinion about anything, or did you learn something new from it? If so, what?

4. Did you highlight or bookmark any passages from the book? Did you have a favorite quote or quotes? If so, share which and why?

5. From your point of view, what were the central themes of the book? How well do you think the author did at exploring them? 6. How would you adapt this book into a movie? Who would you cast in the leading roles?

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