This Golden State

Marit Weisenberg’s This Golden State follows a family on the run, a restless teenage daughter hungry for the truth, and the simple DNA test that threatens their carefully crafted world

The Winslow family lives by five principles:

1. No one can know your real name.
2. Don’t stay in one place too long.
3. If you sense anything is wrong, go immediately
to the meeting spot.
4. Keeping our family together is everything.
5. We wish we could tell you who we are, but we
can’t. Please—do not ask.

Poppy doesn’t know why her family has been running
her whole life, but she does know that there are dire consequences if they’re
ever caught. Still, her curiosity grows each year, as does her desire for real
friends and the chance to build on something, instead of leaving behind school
projects, teams, and crushes at a moment’s notice.

When a move to California exposes a crack in her
parents’ airtight planning, Poppy realizes how fragile her world is. Determined
to find out the truth, she mails in a home DNA test. Just as she starts to
settle into her new life and even begins opening up to a boy in her math class,
the forgotten test results bring her crashing back to reality.

Unraveling the shocking truth of her parents’ real
identities, Poppy realizes that the DNA test has undone decades of careful work
to keep her family anonymous—and the past is dangerously close to catching up
to them. Determined to protect her family but desperate for more, Poppy must
ask: How much of herself does she owe her family? And is it a betrayal to find
her own place in the world?