San Francisco author Dana Reinhardt’s “Tomorrow There Will Be Sun” (Pamela Dorman Books, $26, 275 pages) takes readers on a trip to an exclusive Puerto Vallarta beachfront villa complete with a rainforest shower, a soaking tub carved from volcanic rock and endless hibiscus margaritas, instantly refilled as if by magic. It’s a long-awaited dream vacation.
But sometimes, a dream is just a cigar: a little bitter and singed at the end.
Indeed, things don’t quite go as planned for the two families traveling together, and they soon embark on a maze of midlife mayhem – spats, secrets, suspicions – backdropped by subtle commentary on American privilege and Mexican drug cartels. All this while trying to squeeze every bit of juice from life’s “high-value moments.”
Now, have another margarita.
“I was definitely going for a balance,” Reinhardt says in a recent phone interview while on an “epic East Coast college road trip” with her daughter somewhere in the middle of Connecticut. “I didn’t want to turn the book into a terrible tragedy,” she says of a couple of dramatic scenes. “But I was definitely interested in the stark divide between these glitzy vacation spots and real life in the places people visit.
“I wanted to provide a slightly wider window into what’s going on while we’re all sunbathing on the beach.”
“Tomorrow” marks the debut adult novel for Reinhardt, a prolific, award-winning author of young-adult fiction, including “Harmless,” “How to Build a House” and “The Things a Brother Knows.”
“I love teens and writing about teens – heck, I have teens,” she says, “but I just felt this itch to explore a different kind of voice and new situations.”
Reinhardt has plenty of experience with a variety of situations. She grew up in Southern California in a pseudo-celebrity circle (her best friend was the daughter of Tina Louise – you know, Ginger from “Gilligan’s Island”). She’s had lots of jobs: waiting tables, working with adolescents in the foster care system, being a fact checker for a movie magazine and proofing books for a mass-market paperback house. She went to law school – her father was a federal judge – but she decided that wasn’t for her and moved into documentary TV, working for Frontline on PBS.
Through it all, she always wrote. Even her dad could see it was her calling. “My dad said, ‘You should be a writer.’ I told him I didn’t know how to do that. He said, ‘I think you just do it. You sit down and write.’ That was the best advice I’ve ever been given.”
So she did, and now here we are in Puerto Vallarta, a trip meticulously planned by Reinhardt’s main character and narrator, Jenna, who also happens to be a veteran YA author but has hit a dry spell. Jenna has arranged the perfect getaway to celebrate the 50th birthdays of her husband, Peter, and his best friend and partner in the bagel business, Solly.
From the get-go, hints of tensions emerge. Jenna and Peter’s teen daughter, Clementine, is pining for the boyfriend she left behind. Solly is here with his second wife, the gorgeous, much-younger Ingrid, who obsesses over possible lead in the ceramic dinner plates. Also on the trip is Solly’s teen son from his first marriage and the 5-year-old from his second.
Jenna is not only a planner, but a serious overanalyzer and worrier about everything from her daughter’s love life to hurricanes spoiling the trip, even when Roberto – who greeted them “in a freshly pressed white zip-up coat that looks like it belongs to a doctor, not the house manager of a luxury Mexican beach rental,” assures her there will be sun tomorrow.
“I don’t care all that much about sun,” Jenna tells Roberto. “Too much sun is bad for your skin.”
As in her YA novels, Reinhardt tackles serious themes with wise eyes and playful humor. Even a spat between Peter and Clem, as told by Jenna, becomes an enjoyable moment.
The father and daughter “mostly bond over a shared love of Szechuan food, the spicier the better – digestive consequences be damned – and a shared disdain for the kind of sentimental movies I adore,” Jenna observes. “So when they spar like this, I find it fascinating to watch, and maybe just the tiniest bit gratifying, too.”
Peter and Jen have the easy, yet easily strained, communication of a 20-year-old marriage. Things begin to heat up when Peter receives a mysterious long-distance phone call, allegedly from work. Pretty soon, secrets come to light – kind of – then get blurred in the fray. Issues abound on the Solly side of things, too, as they navigate their blended family. Even Roberto and his wife come into play.
“I wanted to show that, to a matter of degree, everyone has their own drama,” Reinhardt says. “Schisms are going to be revealed when you put people together in close proximity in a situation with such high expectations. So there may be sun tomorrow, but there’s really no guarantee.”
Contact Angela Hill at AngelaHillMedia@gmail.com.
