Final Thoughts on This Golden State

    

In my last blog post, I was still reading This Golden State, and I wrote about what I thought of the book so far. Now, I have finished the book, and I will give a summary of the entire story and my thoughts on the book overall. 

As I mentioned before, Poppy is the main character. She has a little sister named Emma, a mom, and a dad. Her family has been on the run for as long as Poppy can remember. Every time they move to a new place, she does her best not to make too many friends or get too attached. Poppy has spent her entire life giving up things that she loves. Often, the reader glimpses at the internal struggle Poppy goes through; she really wants to have a normal life (have a phone, finish a year at one school, drive a car) but at the same time, she’s frightened at what would happen if she was recognized. She doesn’t know for sure, but every time she does something against her family’s rules of staying hidden, police cars arrive and they have to move away. 

So, Poppy is willing to sacrifice a normal life to keep her family together. 

But their recent move to California has caused Poppy to ask more questions regarding her family’s situation. Who are her parents? Why do they have to hide so much? Did they really do something so bad that she can’t even give strangers her real name? It also seems that her family has more connections to California than any other place they have moved to before. Her room in their new house has a picture of a field of poppies, and Poppy doesn’t really think that this is a coincidence. Could it be that this was where her parents first lived?

Thirsty for answers and a normal life, Poppy manages to convince her parents to let her take on a babysitting job and go attend a summer advanced math class. At the math class, she meets a boy named Harrison (Harry), who becomes Poppy's boyfriend. The teacher of the math class, oblivious to Poppy’s family’s situation but seeing the potential in her, encourages Poppy to pursue her dreams of getting a PhD and getting a STEM job. Poppy has to lie about some things, like her name and why, to the teacher’s great disappointment, she won’t be applying to college. But other than that, for a while, everything is fine. Poppy enjoys her normal life, even if it is pretend and she knows that her family could move any minute. She enjoys pretending that she is a normal high school senior, more worried about college than the police. However, at the same time, Poppy thinks more of what would happen if she refused to go with her parents. She finds it unfair that she is the only person among her peers who can’t pursue her dreams. 

Encouraged by the new people she meets, who remind her, without actually knowing her or her family’s hidden life, that she should be her own person and follow her own dreams, not let her parent’s mistakes overshadow her life. Coincidentally, a genetics class happens right after math class. One day, Poppy decides to do a DNA test. After doing it, she regrets it because she feels bad. To her, this DNA test feels like a betrayal to her parents. But then she meets Harry, she realizes how good she is at math, and she can make money from her babysitting jobs and she forgets about the DNA test. For a while, everything is fine.   

But then she gets the results back. 

The results cause her to ask the same questions, and suddenly, Poppy finds herself on an investigation to trace her family and determine who she is. As she gets deeper into the tangle of lies of her family’s history, she’s forced to tell the truth to strangers, to people she must decide to trust. Poppy’s investigation causes the police to catch on, and her family must move again. But this time, Poppy decides to think for herself. She loves her family, but she also wants to live her own life. At the end of the book, Poppy has to choose: Will she stay in California with a family member she never knew or will she once again give up everything to be with her family? 

               I really liked this book because it shows the importance of identity and family, and also forces the reader to think about when one must choose their own happiness over their family. Is there such a thing as being happy if you’re not with your own family? Is it ok to make decisions that your family might not agree with? The author, Marit Weisenberg, uses a beautifully woven plot in sunny California to address these questions. Overall, I think this is a great book, and you should definitely read it sometime!

Thanks for reading!

Sarah T.