East Bay novelist Linda Lenhoff decided to veer away from pure breeziness in her new, fourth book.
In “Your Actual Life May Vary” (Santa Fe Writers Project, 286 pages, $15.95, Aug. 5, 2025), the protagonist, an empathetic yet quirky 31-year-old graduate student named Patty, literally walks off with an abused young boy, and they move to a new town.
After finishing two light comedies, Lenhoff, a Lafeyette resident, says, “I thought I’d like to work on something more meaningful, but still humorous…. something more sociopolitical, or more about what we face in our daily lives.”
Lenhoff, who launches the novel on Aug. 6 at A Great Good Place for Books in Oakland, adds that the book also is “for those of us who don’t exactly fit in or at least feel like we don’t.”
She admits that she and Patty have some similar tendencies and can feel challenged by reality. Both are astute, funny and thoughtful. As Patty drives away with the child, struggling to come up with what she might tell authorities, she says to herself, “Start again, revise (revision is everything, Patty).”
Revision is something familiar to Lenhoff, an editor and writer who has worked in publishing and communications and has a master’s degree in creative writing from San Diego State University.
“I’ve been trying to get this book published in one version or another for a long time. Let’s say a decade,” she says.
After shopping it around to big houses, after more than one editor stopped reading at about page 27, Lenhoff considered independent publishers, and submitted it to a Santa Fe Writers Project-sponsored contest. It came in the top six among some 1,000 entries in 2019.
It got the attention of editor Nicole Schmidt, who passed it to SFWP publisher Andrew Gifford. Fitting the house’s mission to “adapt to the changing world of publishing and challenge norms,” it has come to fruition five years later.
Lenhoff—whose previous books are “Life a la Mode,” “Latte Lessons” and “The Girl in the ’67 Beetle,” which she published while still working on the new book — says she persisted because she loves her characters.
Along with Patty, there’s the little boy Troy, whose name is chosen as the pair read a picture book with a fuzzy Trojan horse. Also: Larissa, the wise and easygoing day care operator; Philip, her red-haired husband; Juliet, the friendly diner waitress; Jake, the stalwart librarian, his matter-of-fact young daughter Dorothy; and Patty’s accommodating boss, Walter, head of the hardware store Bolts and Everything, which has a vintage cash register that goes “ka-ching.”
The seed of the novel stems from an incident Lenhoff has been thinking about for years. Shopping at a Trader Joe’s, a cute little boy followed her out to her car in the parking garage and grabbed her hand. After returning him to what looked like a very worried nanny, upon arriving at her home, she queried her husband: “Guess what impulse item I didn’t bring home?”
Finding home and community is a major theme in the California-set novel.
Patty leaves San Diego after losing her housing, and, seemingly on a whim, ventures miles with the youngster to a newly developed fictional city called Santa Vallejo, which she learned about during a free lunch buffet advertised in a flyer that came in the mail.
Lenhoff touches upon differences between the glitz of Santa Vallejo proper and the more laid-back valley across the river, where Patty settles. An amusement park called Troggleland, built to bring visitors to the new town (based on Legoland, which initially was controversial when Lenhoff lived in Southern California), has a not too subtle role questioning unhealthy aspects of development in California’s often shaky, unstable terrain.
Like many Californians, the characters in “Your Actual Life May Vary” are not steeped in history and living for the present.
Lenhoff hopes that the book, which has tragic elements but it still fun, follows in the vein of some of her favorite writers—Marcy Dermansky, Elizabeth McKenzie, Kevin Wilson—whose books are funny, quirky and extremely moving.
Lenhoff, who admittedly relies on happy endings, doesn’t mind that “Your Actual Life May Vary” has been called a fairy tale. As to the question of whether Patty’s illegal actions will catch up with her, Lenhoff remarks, “You never know.”
Linda Lenhoff appears at 7 p.m. Aug. 6 at A Great Good Place for Books, 6120 La Salle Ave., Oakland; visit ggpbooks.com.
Editor’s note: Linda Lenhoff has contributed stories to Local News Matters and its affiliate Bay City News, Inc.
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