Shrewdly delineated scenes, loaded conversations, and a delirious surge of desire caustically expose the city’s toxic ruling-class legacy of prejudice and entitlement, while stoking questions of privilege, trust, and betrayal. “(A) masterfully intimate and suspenseful tale, fueled by volatile social conflicts. Like Great Expectations and The Great Gatsby, it features, in Rick Nagano, a young man of modest means who is navigating a world where he doesn’t belong. It offers a window into the usually hidden world of high society, and the influence of historic families on current events. Irresistibly drawn to Fiona, he agrees to help her with a project of questionable merit in the hopes he’ll win her favor.Ī Student of History explores both the beginnings of Los Angeles and present-day dynamics of race and class. One evening, at an event, he meets Fiona Morgan–the elegant scion of an old steel family–who takes an interest in his studies. W– to venues frequented by the descendants of the land and oil barons who built the city. W–‘s grand Bel Air mansion and begins to transcribe her journals–which document an old Los Angeles not described in his history books. Putting aside his half-finished dissertation, Rick sets up office in Mrs. W–, he gets drawn into a world of privilege and wealth far different from his racially mixed, blue-collar beginnings. But as he grows closer to the iconoclastic, charming, and feisty Mrs. W–, the heir to an oil fortune, he sees it at first simply as a source of extra cash. When he lands a job as a research assistant for the elderly Mrs. Nina lives in Northeast Los Angeles with her spouse and their dogs.Rick Nagano is a graduate student in the history department at USC, struggling to make rent on his South Los Angeles apartment near the neighborhood where his family once lived.
She has also been an Associate Faculty member at Antioch University, and a Visiting Professor at Cornell University, Occidental College, and Pitzer College. Nina is executive vice president and chief operating officer of a large nonprofit organization serving children affected by violence and poverty in Central and South Los Angeles. Kennedy and poet and former National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia, of the college textbook Literature for Life: A Thematic Introduction to Reading and Writing. Nina’s books are widely taught and have been selected for numerous “Campus Reads” and “Community Reads” programs, as well as for many book clubs. on the way home from work and keep plowing through until you’ve turned the last page at 3 a.m. Her first book, The Necessary Hunger, was described by Time magazine as “the kind of irresistible read you start on the subway at 6 p.m.
Nina Revoyr was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and a white American father, and grew up in Tokyo, Wisconsin, and Los Angeles.
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