"Coming of Age in California -English Style-" is a lighthearted account of how the author, a naive English teen, fresh from home and convent school, ventured forth with a girlfriend to the California of the nineteen-fifties. The duo travel from Southampton, England on the Queen Mary to New York City, cross-country by Greyhound bus via Route 66 to a welcome in Pasadena. The two girls first visit California's small towns of Bakersfield and Fresno, then on to Hollywood with an involvement in a call-girl ring. The journey continues to Long Beach and a job with the Miss Universe Pageant, and finally to San Francisco, city of sophistication and singles bars. Along the way they encounter climate, communication, customs, and cultural challenges...and a disintegrating friendship. "While a peep into the past for modern ChicLit readers, Mother Hens will also brood over the two adventurous chicks as if their own. And Old Biddies will find themselves cackling and clucking over the escapades in a bygone era when they, too, were young and coming of age." --the author, Jill Schaefer