The Anaheim Beauties Valencia Queen, Dennis Phinney, historical fiction

What happens when: A BOY FALLS FOR A BEAUTIFUL GIRL… THE GIRL FALLS FOR HOLLYWOOD… AND THE KLAN WANTS TO OWN THEM BOTH?

The Anaheim Beauties Valencia Queen is set in “Klanaheim” amidst a hushed-up piece of California history. With stealth, in 1924, the Ku Klux Klan took over Anaheim’s city council plus ten of eleven slots on the police force. In a Roaring ’20s citrus-packing suburb of 10,000 people, where the ethics of Jay Gatsby collide with those of Elmer Gantry, an aspiring high school pitching phenom, fatherless Dean Reynolds, falls under the spell of drop-dead-gorgeous Helen Webber and her rich father.

But Helen, whose face graces orange crate labels shipped around the world, is using Dean as local arm-candy while sleeping her way through Hollywood casting couches. Her father and his “connections” all turn out to be Klansmen. After a shadowy motorcar accident kills a teammate on Dean’s prom night, Dean has no one safe to turn to. But the Klan is there to “help”.

Steeped in true but hidden history, the story’s characters and dilemmas are as relevant today as they were in 1924. This provocative coming-of-age historical novel makes our candy-coated past feel alarmingly familiar.

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A Southern California native with a passion for history and construction, Dennis graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic with a master’s in engineering in the twilight of perceived American innocence. He returned to California following the Vietnam War and built a career as a licensed civil and mechanical engineer. Figuring novels are a sneaky way to write about the truth, he began writing fiction. He writes “Red Car Noir,” tales of the dark side of the American dream, typically set around Los Angeles in the early 1900s when a veneer of front-page optimism whitewashed the corruption that shattered lives on boulevards of broken dreams. For more information about Dennis and his writing, go to dennisphinney.flywheelsites.com.