Digging to Wonderland: Memory Pieces

Trinidad's past is rich fodder for a collection of memory pieces that wind the reader through the underbelly of 1960s and '70s America--and Southern California, more specifically. In Trinidad's recollections, the proximity to Hollywood both glamorizes and condemns the bustling suburbs. Stains of the Manson murders and adoration for The Boys in the Band are documented with the same care as fascinations with Barbie dolls and twelve-cent comic books. The struggles of an awkward gay teenager meld into the weighty anecdotes of a young man who was a dog sitter to the stars, a historian for familial legacies of hand mirrors and sweet letters, a survivor of sexual assault, and whose mysterious car trouble spared him from dating a man with AIDS.

Digging to Wonderland follows a young David Trinidad through a slice of childhood with his longtime friend Nancy DeMario, as they tunnel into the ground of her backyard, always in search of the next great adventure. "So the 'twinkly lights' in the hills above Chatsworth were actually missiles armed with nuclear warheads. And without knowing it, I grew up under their spell."