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California Gold
  • Published: 19 April 2026
  • ISBN: 9780241562383
  • Imprint: Michael Joseph
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $55.00
Categories:

California Gold

Formats & editions
EBook
19 Mar 2026
Audiobook
19 Mar 2026
Hardback
19 Apr 2026
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For readers of Claire Lombardo and Ann Patchett, a multi-generational literary saga set against the backdrop of a 1970's Californian dream

Frank and Chrissy meet a couple of days into 1970. Frank O’Hara, with his Elvis T-shirt and slicked-back hair, has escaped England for adventure out west. As soon as someone tells him about a house in the desert two hours east of LA where the walls are curved and the glass shimmers, a house where Elvis and Priscilla Presley honeymooned only a few years before, Frank tells himself: I have to see this place.

When Chrissy, all blonde hair and oversized sunglasses, picks him up hitchhiking on the side of the road, it’s love at first sight. Weeks later they elope, setting out to build Mirage, an exact replica of Elvis and Priscilla’s mid-century honeymoon fantasy in a muddy English field. For the next forty years, Mirage will be home to three generations of the O’Hara family. But when your life is a sunny Californian dream raised in Britain, you start to wonder: where exactly do I belong?
  • Published: 19 April 2026
  • ISBN: 9780241562383
  • Imprint: Michael Joseph
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 400
  • RRP: $55.00
Categories:

About the author

Jodie Chapman

Jodie Chapman spent twelve years working as a photographer before returning to her first love of writing. She lives in Kent with her husband and three sons. Another Life, her debut novel, was a BBC2 Between the Covers pick while her second novel, Oh, Sister was published to critical acclaim. California Gold is her third work of fiction. www.jodiechapman.co.uk @jodiechapman [Twitter icon] @jodiechapman [Instagram icon]
JC

Also by Jodie Chapman

Another Life
Oh, Sister
See all

Praise for California Gold

Both a wide-screen romance and a dream that turns into obsession. An epic portrait of a complicated family, ambitious and compelling

JULIE OWEN MOYLAN

Stylish, vibrant, romantic and beautifully written, the characters' various realisations that the only thing any of us have is the moment we are living in will stay with me for a very long time

KATE SAWYER

Exquisite, evocative and cinematic

YOMI ADEGOKE

If you love Taylor Jenkins Reid you will adore this. The scope of California Gold is breathtaking - English snobbery, the American dream and a dance through the second half of the twentieth century with a jukebox soundtrack. Extraordinary

RACHAEL WOLF

Exceptional. Britain's response to Ann Pachett

Lidija Hilje

So good, so sharp. A movie-scene beginning and a shattering of love’s young dream

RUTH CRILLY

Gorgeous and heartfelt. California Gold shows how both love and tragedy can echo through generations

KATIE BISHOP