This double vision brings both characters into sharp emotional focus LaCour alternates these stories so that the reader slowly understands how Sara’s past brings her to Emilie’s present. Next, there is Emilie, the aimless twenty-something drifting through various college majors and part time jobs, looking for anything that offers her a sense of clarity, agency, and purpose. First, there is Sara, a heartbroken teenage runaway fleeing her small hometown in Northern California and reeling after the death of her first love Annie, living on the road and doing whatever it takes to make it to Los Angeles in one piece. Named for the herb (part of the mint family) that grows in thick and lush tangles, Yerba Buena intertwines two perspectives and two timelines. I started reading my early copy in the winter, when such warmth felt unimaginable, and revisiting now in celebration of its publication, I basked in it. Yerba Buena is Nina LaCour’s adult debut, but coming on the tails of an established and wildly successful YA career, this book sits at a unique point in LaCour’s body of work with both the freshness of an artistic departure and also the refinement of a triumphant mid-career masterpiece. Even until a couple weeks ago, it was gray and drizzly and cold, but if there was ever a novel for summer-ifying Portland, Yerba Buena is a warm glow of a book up for the task. The summer in Portland, OR has been late-blooming this year. The Autostraddle Encyclopedia of Lesbian Cinema.LGBTQ Television Guide: What To Watch Now.

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