If all goes well, we will be here for the first official night of our GRAPEVINE tour:
We are in LA —but already behind schedule because of closures and strange hours for Father’s Day – fair enough! Happy Father’s Day to all the dads!
Craig is still basking in his Tartan Army experience in Boston – he has so many great stories I’m having trouble wrangling him back onto the same page, so to speak.
In our book, the tiny Southern California town of Grapevine and the 40-mile mountain pass collectively known as The Grapevine is where Lou Gomersall’s teenage daughter Abby was last seen. When I was in college I sometimes felt like I was living on that particular stretch of road between Nor Cal and So Cal, and lots of California readers have already been relating their own I-5 and Grapevine experiences.
So of course we’re starting there!
Read more the Grapevine (book and place) and Abby’s case:
Grapevine, CA
Population: tiny. Unincorporated community in Kern County on Interstate 5. Gateway to the Grapevine —Southern California’s famous freeway through the Tejon Pass to Los Angeles. Notorious for road closures in winter.
Lou’s last stop of the day was the town of Grapevine. Abby’s last known whereabouts. Ground Zero. Even if Lou hadn’t needed to get the new flyers up, the pull of the place was like a magnetic force.
The village of Grapevine itself was not much more than a cluster of travelers and roadside services, surrounded by golden rolling hills, with stretches of empty fields. A peaceful vista, easy on the eyes.
At an elevation of 1,499 feet, the community was located at the foot of a mountainous 40-mile stretch collectively known as the Grapevine; not named, as most people assumed, for its twisting curves, but for the actual grapevines that grew along the original canyon road. According to historians, it was one of the oldest roadside rest stops in California.
Now it was the bottleneck that most California travelers passed through going north to south.
Abby’s credit card records had shown she checked into the Grapevine Inn at 10:05 p.m., presumably because of road condition warnings that had shut the Tejon Pass that evening. She sent no texts, made no phone calls that night. Her phone had not pinged off any cell phone tower since she’d responded to that last text from a friend earlier in the evening on her drive. But she’d been there. The night manager had seen her, briefly. She had not been with anyone. She had not been coerced.
And then there was that last glimpse, the security camera footage of her Corolla driving out of the lot at four a.m.
They didn’t even know which way she had turned back onto the freeway. Did she continue south, or head back up north?
Lou had slept at the Inn at least a dozen times over the last year. Every time hoping that something would turn up, some clue, some witness, some staff recollection. But she kept returning, not just to ask questions. It made her feel close to Abby.
In those first few months, Lou made this drive almost every weekend or spare day off. Needing to be there. She’d worn her own track on the loop around the Los Padres National Forest from Santa Barbara to Grapevine. Two-hours-plus that should’ve taken an hour as the crow flies. But there were no public roads through the immense territory.
It was that forest, named after the Spanish missionary priests who imposed their dubious blessings on California long before it was a state, and these mountains that made the search for Abby so daunting for the police. Los Padres ranged over nearly two million acres. So vast it was divided into a north and south region across multiple counties.
And Abby could be anywhere out there. Anywhere.
The Grapevine will release on June 23, in hardcover, e book versions and audiobook - and paperback to come. Preorder/order here:
There’s also a Goodreads giveaway going on for a few more days. - for US readers only - but both US and UK readers can enter multiple giveaways by subscribing to this newsletter. If you’re subscribed, you’re automatically entered!
I'm loving the book so far!!! We must have driven past Grapevine before on the 5. I'll look out for it next time!