Saffron is caught between two worlds and looking for a place to call home.  Her life has changed drastically, and there are important decisions to be made.

 

A year ago Saffron was a journalist for the London Sunday Times covering the brutal civil war in Sierra Leone.  She lived in hotels, her personal belongings fit in a duffel bag, and she could be off in a moment's notice.  Her handsome boyfriend was a surgeon with Doctors Without Borders.  Life was romantic and dangerous.

 

Almost a year later, Saffron finds herself an unemployed single mother and heiress to a $10 million Los Angeles beachfront property.  Things have changed so fast her head is still spinning.

 

What happened?  First, her prince turned out to be a toad.  Saffron left him and her life in Sierra Leone when she discovered his cheating and her pregnancy. Back in London, during the last months of her pregnancy, Saffron's adoptive mother passed away.  To Saffron's great surprise, she was named sole heir to the estate.  Now Saffron is back in California with her newborn daughter, and she's trying to make a life for both of them.

 

Being the owner of a prime piece of real estate doesn't seem like such a bad thing.  However, with Saffron's inheritance came hefty and manipulative restrictions.  Among them was to allow her adoptive mother's biological son, Francis, to maintain his residence on the property.  Francis, to the great disappointment of his mother, lived life as a free-loader and a hippie.  Understandably, Saffron is not thrilled to be living so close to him and his groupies.  But she hasn't seen Francis in many years, and he seems to have changed.  No more drugs; no more slovenly living.  In fact, he seems to genuinely care about Saffron and her baby.  Is he to be trusted?

 

Meanwhile, Saffron is struggling with the challenges of new motherhood.  She's joined a breast-feeding class and is befriended by members of the group.  Saffron is glad to connect with these women as she's feeling like an outcast as a single mother.  Quickly she is sucked into the suburban lifestyle of the well off.  She wonders whether she might truly fit into this comfortable way of life despite the social climbers and the out-doers.  Her closest new friend, Anika, makes it all seem so easy and perfect.  However, it's the misfit in their group of four friends who makes Saffron question her new life of excess.  The woman is a missionary who has also spent a great deal of time in third world countries and plans to return soon.  

 

To complicate matters further, Saffron is not in love with the doctor and father of her child.  Instead, she thinks she's in love with an African man who is lovely and mysterious and in very serious trouble.  She may be his only hope.

 

This book is filled with stories.  It's a story of women's friendships; it's a story of new motherhood; it's a story of very different societies, each seductive in its own way; and it's a story of family and loyalty and being true to yourself.  It's a great debut novel, and we'll look forward to the next one. 

About the Author:  An honor graduate of the London School of Economics, Maria Lennon now finds herself living under a heap of Disney paraphernalia in a slightly disheveled tree house in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, with her husband, three children, a dog, three cats, and a caterpillar named Harry.

Making It Up As I Go Along : A Novel