In her debut novel, 360 Flip, Molly McGrann portrayed American suburbia in the 1960s. For her second novel, Molly shifts her focus beyond the burbs, out into Exurbia. The novel is set in Los Angeles in the mid-eighties. Reagan has been voted President again in a landslide win and the word from Washington trumpets an optimistic America. Lise and Ed Valencia are both teenagers in LA, but their experiences of their city and their country arent quite so optimistic. Their experience is one of disaffection and alienation, of hanging out at Taco Bell, overdosing on Red Coke and Yum Yum donuts, eating empty food to fill up empty lives: lives that are no more teflon-coated than that of their President and the country he leads. Exurbia explores the same dark side of LA as the recent film, Crash, starring Sandra Bullock and Matt Dillon.