BOOKS
PAGE TURNERS
A look at recently published works by UCR faculty, staff, and alumni
“Becoming Delilah”
By Sara Marchant, MFA ’15
Fairlight Books
June 2023, 224 pages
After a precarious childhood spent living with her abuela, all Delilah wants is a beautiful place of her own. She settles into a shoreside cottage on an island off Cape Cod, but soon finds herself under the watchful and disapproving gaze of her nosey new neighbors. When sparks fly between Delilah and her reclusive neighbor Anton, the past threatens to catch up with them both, exposing terrible secrets.
Marchant earned an MFA in creative writing and writing for the performing arts from UCR.
“Silver Surfer: Ghost Light”
By John Jennings
Marvel Universe
September 2023, 128 pages
One of Marvel’s earliest African American characters, Al B. Harper was a physicist who sacrificed his life to save the world in “The Silver Surfer #5,” published in 1969. Now, 54 years later, Harper has been brought back to life by Eisner-award winning graphic novelist John Jennings as a new Marvel superhero in the five-book miniseries “Silver Surfer: Ghost Light.”
Jennings is a professor of media and cultural studies.
“Gangsters Don’t Die”
By Tod Goldberg
Counterpoint
September 2023, 400 pages
Mafia hit-man-turned-rabbi Sal Cupertine is ready to get out of the life, but enemies on both sides of the law are now hot on his trail. Sal must team up with some unlikely allies — and confront the reality of who he has become — in the conclusion to Tod Goldberg’s popular and critically acclaimed Gangsterland trilogy.
Goldberg is a professor of creative writing and director of the UCR Palm Desert low-residency MFA program.
“Octopus’s Garden”
By Benjamin T. Jenkins, M.A. ’13, Ph.D. ’16
University Press of Kansas
July 2023, 384 pages
After the collapse of the cattle industry in the 1860s, the arrival of railroads — attacked by newspapers as the greedy “octopus” — and the expansion of citrus agriculture transformed a struggling Southern California. “Octopus’s Garden” explores how these industries have shaped the economy, landscape, labor systems, and popular image of the region.
Jenkins earned a master’s degree and doctorate in history from UCR.
“Mad River, Marjorie Rowland, and the Quest for LGBTQ Teachers’ Rights”
By Margaret A. Nash and Karen L. Graves
Rutgers University Press
August 2022, 144 pages
Marjorie Rowland v. Mad River School District set the stage for today’s LGBTQ civil rights — but almost no one has heard of it. In the first in-depth treatment of this foundational legal case, the authors tell the story of Marjorie Rowland, the pioneer who fought for employment rights for LGBTQ educators and paid a heavy price for it.
Nash is a professor emeritus in UCR’s School of Education.
“Making Relatives of Them”
By Rebecca Kugel
University of Oklahoma Press
September 2023, 264 pages
“Making Relatives of Them” examines kinship among the Great Lakes Native nations in the late 18th and early 19th century, revealing how these Indigenous peoples’ understanding of kinship and concepts of gender defined their social, political, and diplomatic interactions with one another and with Europeans and their descendants.
Kugel is an associate professor of history.
Return to UCR Magazine: Fall 2023