Reviews

I had the benefit of reading the reviews before reading the book. I remember thinking that this is a book that doesn't need another positive review.

On further reflection, I determined there might be some value in offering a different perspective. A California Love Story is as much about generational transcendence as it is about love.

This story is timeless. 

If you have been keeping up with today's news stories, they generally follow the same script of casting fear, uncertainty, and doubt on the youngest generations. The most absurd characterization I've read is author Jonathan Haidt's claim that "Gen Z is a national crisis." It's irresponsible to label Z a "national crisis" when it is between 13 and 27 years of age today. Half of Z hasn't even entered the workforce. The other half is charting its course, which every generation does. From my vantage point, Z is poised to become a "national treasure" that produces a multitude of Ray and Doras. 

Ray Wilcox and Dora Kullman were the same median age as Z's today when they spoke in their generational slang as 20-year-olds mapping their future together. They did so while exchanging 176 letters and telegrams from 1925 to 1927. The author discovered the correspondence in a lady's hat box in the attic of the couple's last home. 

When I finished reading A California Love Story, it felt like the author had distilled decades into years. 

The book took me back to growing up next door to the Thills in the same seaside city that enchanted Ray Wilcox when he first stepped off a train from Oklahoma to Southern California. 

What Ray saw was the same view I had every day for more than two decades before I left home to pursue my dreams. As Ray repeatedly reminded Dora, the sight of the Pacific Ocean not only reinforced his belief that Oceanside's natural landscape was its most alluring feature but also his desire to have a hand in developing what was at the time sagebrush, rocks, and sand with less than 3000 inhabitants. 

Today, Ray Wilcox would have been described as a visionary. There is much to learn if you invest the time in reading this gem of a book. 

Among the unforgettable lines was this one:

"I should send you a questionnaire instead of a letter because I ask so many questions," wrote Ray.

Or, this one: 

"I feel like the Information Bureau," wrote Dora as she fielded one question after another from friends in Wichita about Ray's whereabouts and pursuits. "Isn't it nice to be missed?"

Ray and Dora were part of what one of the most acclaimed newscasters in the history of journalism, Tom Brokaw, termed the Greatest Generation. Brokaw often highlights the Greatest Generation's "shared sense of purpose in rebuilding a nation" that lived through World War I, the Spanish Flu, the Dust Bowl, and the Great Depression. 

Gen Z is the first generation since the Greatest which is more a movement than it is a generation. Z has signaled early and often in the past five years using its particular generational slang that it marches to a different set of values as it lives through a pandemic, three wars, financial instability, and geopolitical distortion. 

Both generations also shared a wicked sense of humor which is why, as I turned each page, I felt like I was in a generational Time Machine. 

Ray's courtship of Dora began with a friendly postcard written on a train ride in 1925 en route from Wichita to Miami in search of a job. Ray wasn't in Miami for long, but I became convinced by reading between the lines that one particular event in South Florida was a defining moment. 

Here's how Ray recounted the experience in a letter to Dora dated August 28, 1925:

"They are spending $100 million on a tract of beautiful land and turning it into the most wonderful suburban city called Coral Cables with $300 million in contracts to build fine homes.

"That's quite a sum of money if I say so myself, old girl." There was a fondness I felt touching in his words, which led to another equally poignant excerpt:

"I have a new dream to tell you now. I want to work in the land business and real estate."

Dora's reply was firm and unequivocal:

"Remember you will always succeed better at anything you like than any other trade. Why don't you try the real estate business. You can win it. And, the sooner the better." 

The author, who is a Baby Boomer, drops his fair share of great lines into the narrative as he moderates the conversation between Ray and Dora while at the same time decoding their generational terminology. One of those lines was the first sentence in the first chapter of his book titled Dreams:

"Some nights, I visit my grandparents’ house and garden while I sleep."

By the time Dora (in 1978) and Ray (in 1986) passed their lives had spanned three generations and, in Ray's case, the early stages of a fourth. During their 50-plus years of marriage, Dora gave birth to two daughters. Her oldest daughter, Bobbie, a member of the Silent Generation, and her husband Jack raised a family of five children comprised of Baby Boomers and Gen X. The children produced Millennial and Gen Z grandchildren. Every generation played a part in A California Love Story. 

Coverage of the generations is most often presented in silos. It wasn't until I read this book that it occurred to me that is not the most effective way to profile different age groups. Generations, as it turns out, are linear. Each generation ultimately improves on its generational inheritance. 

As I interacted with our next-door neighbors, I couldn't recall a time when Jack or Bobbie Thill took offense to my generational slang or the values I was advocating over regular Saturday morning kitchen table conversations in their home. I can recall that they always listened.

Ray and Dora's legacy was cemented when Bobbi planted a tree in memory of her mother in Oceanside's Heritage Park. This wasn't just any tree. It was a sycamore tree which the author affectionately refers to today as Dora's Tree. Who doesn't remember the symbolism of the Sycamore Gap Tree located along Hadrian's Wall in the opening scene of the 2010 movie Robin Hood? Dora's Tree projects a symbolism of its own. Bobbie Thill had to have known about the mystical nature of the sycamore, which has a lifetime expectancy of 250-300 years, when she planted it nearly 50 years ago in Oceanside's Heritage Park. 

The final scene of the book finds the author walking through a small cemetery 200 yards east of Heritage Park that he'd overlooked on previous visits. Unbeknownst to him, he walked past the gravestones of my parents in the All Saints Church Cemetery. 

Thill waited until the last paragraph to deliver this passage:

"Sometimes it takes a lifetime to notice and understand the importance of the people and things around you." 

Amen.