RAISING PANIC

In Zimlich’s novel, two sisters in a San Diego suburb try desperately to rescue themselves from a dysfunctional situation.

In 1978, 9-year-old Panic McCormack and her 14-year-old sibling, PJ, find life tolerable only in the arid scrubland behind their ramshackle house in El Cajon, overlooking San Diego. “El Cajon” is Spanish for “the box,” and it’s named for the locale’s valley, its most prominent geological feature; it’s also a clear symbol of how these girls are trapped—especially with the promise of San Diego in the distance. Their father, Chet, who was traumatized by his service in Vietnam, has left them; their mother, Betsy, is a violent, barely functional alcoholic. PJ, as the older sister, does her best to protect and properly raise the precocious Panic. Twice in the space of a week they try to escape their home situation; the second time, they make it all the way to downtown San Diego, but it quickly becomes a hellscape. Will the pair find the better life they crave? Zimlich is a skilled writer who offers wonderful passages, such as this one, about a harried PJ: “But her words were limp, falling out of her like loose pages from an old book.” There are tantalizingly lush early descriptions of San Diego, suggesting a glimpse of the Promised Land. Indeed, the supposed Eden of that city and the baking desert of El Cajon suggest biblical parallels that hover over the narrative. Overall, the novel engagingly shows how kids are the ones that suffer the most in troubled families, and how things can go badly without a protector like PJ, who’s a wonderful and believable fictional creation. There are other good people around them, including caring neighbors who know that something is wrong in the McCormack house but are afraid to act directly; there are also characters like social worker Mrs. Perón, who’s not only clueless but nastily officious.

A strong, moving story about two memorable kids.