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Playback Review

The latest time-hopping novel by Malden (a follow up to Shine Until Tomorrow) takes readers back to “the Summer of Love,1967” in San Francisco’s storied Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Divorced mom Mari Caldwell and her four-year-old daughter, Joni, live in present-day San Francisco, but Mari’s nighttime stories to Joni always begin with “Once upon a time there was a summer,” recounting her secret time-travel journey as a 17-year-old, to Haight-Ashbury and an entirely different life with then up-and-coming rock star Jimmy Westwood. One weekend while Joni spends time with her father, Mari revisits present-day Haight-Ashbury—only to walk into another portal that transports her back, once again, to 1967.

This time around, Mari learns that some of the people she met in the past are major players in her current life—reminding her of the enduring power of love. Readers will delight in the sights and sounds of hippie culture when she travels back in time, as “the heartbeat of 1967 pulsates in the street,” with Jefferson Airplane, Bob Dylan, and Joan Baez blaring from houses, the smell of weed and incense hanging on the air, and plentiful record stores and 25-cent “love burgers.” Those rich sensory details bring Mari’s past time travels to vivid life, as she reignites her love and passion for Jimmy—all while his band experiences their first hit, “Tamara Moonlight,” a song Jimmy wrote expressly for Mari.

As Mari leans into her startling yet thrilling new reality—and learns surprising connections that weave the past into her future, including her mother’s present-day husband, Mari’s stepfather, being one of Jimmy’s band members—she feels an intense pull to stay in 1967. That contrasts sharply with her desire to return to her daughter, but, as Mari makes her final decision, she also learns that even though the past may feel settled, some moments—and emotions—stay with us forever.

WritersCast

Podcast: Carla Malden – Playback (a novel)

Give and Take

Podcast: Playback, with Author Carla Malden

The San Francisco Experience

Playback: Talking with Author Carla Malden

The Newest Rant

Playback is a Fantastic Novel About How (Literally) Living in the Past Can’t Fix Your Present

“Writers on Writing” Podcast with Author/Host Tony DuShane

Carla Malden

Tony DuShane chats with author Carla Malden

Los Angeles Daily News

Carla Malden talks new YA novel ahead of Diesel Bookstore chat about books and late father Karl Malden

As author Carla Malden was conjuring up a time and place to set her young adult time-travel novel, she kept going back to San Francisco during 1967’s Summer of Love.

Fancounters

Carla Malden (Author of Shine Until Tomorrow and Daughter of Karl Malden)

Canyon News

Carla Malden’s New Time Travel YA Novel Speaks To All Generations

Shine Until Tomorrow is a timely novel that provides much needed uplift to all audiences — from young readers carrying on the activist torch of the late ‘60s through older readers who know the era and especially the iconic music well. The book is a coming of age story about self discovery in a time of social unrest.

Publishers Weekly

Winter Institute 15: Adult Authors to Meet

More than 130 adult and children’s authors and illustrators will be attending this year’s Winter Institute. Below are well-known and up-and-coming adult authors who will be signing at the conference.

Literary Hub

5 December Books You Might Have Missed

Happy New Year, Happy New Decade—but wait! We’re not quite done with 2019, because there are a few books you may have missed from its last month. December is always a book desert, but among the limited number of titles released during this most recent December, there are a still some worth mentioning as worthy candidates for your TBR piles.

Hasty Book List

Author Interview – Carla Malden

Author I draw inspiration from: Meg Wolitzer writes fascinating women and puts them in situations that test them without feeling forced. If I may include a playwright, Tennessee Williams looms large for me. He transforms the way people talk into poetry, often injecting humor. That’s literary alchemy, pure magic – utterly unattainable, but inspirational nonetheless.

Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Carla Malden

Carla Malden is the author of the new novel Search Heartache. Her other books include the memoir Afterimage. She has worked in motion picture production and development, and has been a screenwriter. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times. She lives in Los Angeles.

Women Writers, Women’s Books

Interview with Carla Malden, author of Search Heartache

Raised in Los Angeles, Carla Malden began her career working in motion picture production and development before becoming a screenwriter. Along with her father, Academy Award–winning actor Karl Malden, she coauthored his critically acclaimed memoir, When Do I Start?. More recently, Malden published AfterImage: A Brokenhearted Memoir of A Charmed Life, a fiercely personal account of battling the before and surviving the after of losing her first husband to cancer.

Kirkus Reviews

Books by Carla Malden

Afterimage is “A brutally candid memoir of the “all-consuming and profoundly uncomplicated” power of grief.”