Muñoz, whose two previous books (The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue and Zigzagger) were short-story collections, divides the novel among five points of view, a structure that makes each chapter work as a discrete piece focused on a different view of the relationship between two Bakersfield locals, Dan Watson and Teresa Garza.
Janet Leigh is never mentioned, but she appears both as a character (referred to only as "The Actress") and as a symbol of the women who left their small towns for Hollywood, longing for fame and fortune. Through The Actress, Muñoz explores how the reality of escaping to Hollywood is not as glamorous as the Bakersfield girls believe: Even as The Actress prepares for her iconic role, she wishes for time to raise her children, the quieter life she might have had if she had stayed in Fresno.
While The Actress only passes through town, the other women in the novel are stuck: Arlene, a middle-aged waitress running a failing motel; Candy, a jealous shoe-store clerk; and Teresa, who sees Arlene's son Dan as her chance to escape.
Muñoz opens and closes the novel with Candy's chapters, told in the second person. The voice is instantly engaging, although at times she can come across as too cold and distant. Through the opening chapter, the novel sweeps from a Bakersfield drive-in to the cantina where Teresa and Dan sing, Candy's jealousy growing even as she begins to date a different boy.
It's an ambitious opening, and when it works, it reads like a literary version of a cinematic long take, sweeping across multiple characters and settings to look at not only the relationship, but also the changing town of Bakersfield in the early 1960s.
