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Pasadena
From the award-winning author of The Danish Girl and The Rose City , Pasadena tells the story of Linda Stamp, a fishergirl born in 1903 on a coastal onion farm, and the three men who change her her jealous brother, Edmund; Bruder, the orphan Linda’s father brings home from World War I; and a Pasadena orange rancher named Willis Poore. The novel spans Linda’s adventurous and romantic life, weaving the tales of her Mexican mother and her German-born father with those of the rural Pacific Coast of her youth and of the small, affluent city, Pasadena, that becomes her home. Pasadena is a novel of passion and history, about a woman and a place in perpetual transformation.
498 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
162 people are currently reading
885 people want to read
About the author
David Ebershoff
10 books717 followersDavid Ebershoff is the author of four books, including The Danish Girl, which was adapted into an Oscar-winning film, and the #1 bestseller The 19th Wife, which was adapted for television. In 2017 the New York Times named The Danish Girl one of the 25 books that have shaped LGBTQ literature in the past twenty years. David is Vice President and Executive Editor at Hogarth Books and Random House, where he edits a wide-range of prize-winning and bestselling authors of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 124 reviews
April 3, 2009
So far this book is not much fun. I suspect this author's first book but the descriptive narrative (particularly regarding the flora and fauna of California - and I am somewhat of a tree hugger) is a bit over the top. Doesn't move as well as subsequent books.
Okay - don't bother with this one. I slugged my way through and found myself delighted every time a character died - you care about absolutely nobody in the book. Also, the botanical references continued completely through the book. Either Mr. Ebershoff got better with subsequent books or he had a much better editor
Okay - don't bother with this one. I slugged my way through and found myself delighted every time a character died - you care about absolutely nobody in the book. Also, the botanical references continued completely through the book. Either Mr. Ebershoff got better with subsequent books or he had a much better editor
February 25, 2014
I have to rate this almost like 2 separate books. I enjoyed the history of California and the story of the rapid change from agricultural landscape to busy modern life. The struggle between preserving the natural state of the land and reaping economic benefits and building more and bigger homes is a story that is still going on all over this country, and that part of the novel was worth reading. The romance, however, was disappointing. It seemed to be a gothic romance relocated to 20th century California, and the characters were so tragic and unbelievable that it was really hard to believe in the story. I kept wanting to reach out and shake them and say "Why can't you people just TALK to each other???!!!" It is hard to believe that a woman as unconventional and free-spirited as Linda Stamp would be so repressed and unwilling to share any true feelings or thoughts with her suitors, or with anyone else in her life. The only characters I found at all believable were Blackwood and Cherry, and they served more as narrators than as main characters.
March 2, 2013
I made it to page 265 of this bloated, overwrought saga. I don't care what happens to any of the characters. It was occasionally, unintentionally, laugh out loud funny, as in, "It was difficult to live near her and not reach to stroke the soft fur upon her arm."
June 25, 2008
Great material, but it never quite blossoms.
September 18, 2012
Carol Corbus of Bainbridge Island stuck this book in my car as I was leaving - she said something like, "you grew up in this area, you should read this" and something slightly derogatory... As often happens with me, I didn't have a book waiting in the wings like my sister Sarah always has - and this book did make it from the car to the bedside table and I picked it up and read a bit and then I had to find out what happened. After 100 pages or so I thought to call Carol and ask, "are there any redeeming qualities about this book? Please tell me something good is going to come from my reading this." But I didn't and I'm not sure her answer would have convinced me to stop wasting my time. This tells you nothing about the book... I was curious about what life was like in Pasadena during the early 1900's - thinking of my Nana and Grandmother Cooney during those times.... but I'm not sure any of it was accurate; Mom?
Secrets, promises kept and not kept, poor communication, romance, wealth, poverty, women ending up pregnant and with STI's, ? Don't bother I would say.
Secrets, promises kept and not kept, poor communication, romance, wealth, poverty, women ending up pregnant and with STI's, ? Don't bother I would say.
March 13, 2009
I wanted to love this book, esp after recently finishing The Danish Girl (also by the same author and excellent). Instead, it left me wanting a bit). It was epic and spanned a lot of years, characters, etc. I'm not sure what it was that didn't quite work for me. 1 thing is that I never connected with any of the characters. I'd be interested what others think. It's definitely worth a read, but it was missing something for me. Heard it has been compared to East of Eden (which I've never read)- may have to pick that one up.
July 7, 2014
Disappointing. I was lulled into it by the rich and descriptive language, and the promise if a good storyline.
The awkward narrative structure, and all the "but haven't you already figured it out?" and "Don't you understand what I'm saying?" moments left me confused and wanting to thumb back to earlier parts of the book to look for clues.
Also, the Emily Bronte quotes and echoes of Wuthering Heights grew tiresome, as did the words "greasy" and "effluvia" - favorites of the author, unfortunately.
Must say the cover on this one was more beautiful than its contents.
The awkward narrative structure, and all the "but haven't you already figured it out?" and "Don't you understand what I'm saying?" moments left me confused and wanting to thumb back to earlier parts of the book to look for clues.
Also, the Emily Bronte quotes and echoes of Wuthering Heights grew tiresome, as did the words "greasy" and "effluvia" - favorites of the author, unfortunately.
Must say the cover on this one was more beautiful than its contents.
October 2, 2009
Wow. What a drag. I kept waiting for the story to pick up and for that moment when I'd be drawn in and it never happened. Instead I felt myself being sucked deeper and deeper into a depression.
I really enjoyed reading The 19th Wife and thought I would enjoy another book by the author, but this one.. it just didn't do it for me.
Not recommended at all unless you enjoy stories about ill-fated love, diseases and the way gossip can ruin a life.
I really enjoyed reading The 19th Wife and thought I would enjoy another book by the author, but this one.. it just didn't do it for me.
Not recommended at all unless you enjoy stories about ill-fated love, diseases and the way gossip can ruin a life.
September 5, 2010
This is one book I gave up on. I actually don't know why I bought it, as I didn't like 'The Nineteenth Wife' by this author, either!
Too much detail, and a depressing story.
Maybe I should pay attention to my own reviews!
Too much detail, and a depressing story.
Maybe I should pay attention to my own reviews!
November 25, 2014
Laser-like male gaze directed at the heroine, pages and pages of native plant name-dropping, an off-putting credulity in those good ol' American anti-gravity bootstraps, and loads of groaners. Have fun!
December 5, 2013
David Ebershoff is the editor of a division of Random House called The Modern Library, but he left his heart in the old library. Asked by an Australian interviewer to name his "favorite books of all time," he swoons through a list of 19th-century novels, starting with Thomas Hardy's "Jude the Obscure."
That won't surprise anyone who reads his latest work, a luxurious tragedy called "Pasadena" that could sit comfortably alongside Hardy's brooding classic. Everything in this novel weeps with regret � for the loss of love and land and potential, but especially for the passing of a grand literary style. It's slow and gorgeous, full of romance and disaster, swelling with the kind of heavy symbolism that went out with scarlet A's and white whales.
What's most brilliant about "Pasadena," though, is the way the story comes to us. Its parts accumulate from shards of gossip polished into legend.
Andrew Jackson Blackwood knows that when the soldiers come back from Europe and the Pacific, they'll need houses, lots of them, and he's going to supply them. He's already made a fortune buying distressed properties during the Depression, but when he spots a rare track of empty farmland in Pasadena, he sees the potential to construct an entire neighborhood from scratch.
After a few unsuccessful attempts to negotiate with the owner, he's contacted by Cherry Nay, a slick real estate agent, who wants to make sure he hears and understands the dark history of this land. And so, over the course of several weeks, Blackwood is spellbound by the remarkable tragedy of a young woman who rose beyond her dreams but failed to catch the simple happiness she craved.
Linda Stamp was 16 when her father returned to their onion farm along the southern coast of California at the end of World War I. The family had heard nothing of his time in the service, nor of Bruder, the quiet soldier he brings home. (Think "Brude the Obscure.")
Linda meets him after staring down a shark and running out of the ocean naked carrying lobsters. So begins a smoldering romance that eventually burns both these lovers to ash.
Bruder is a sullen, intellectual man of frightening strength and patience. Though he's "won" Linda in a ghastly wartime bargain with her father, he never reveals that promise, choosing instead to earn her love through the power of his devotion. It's a peculiar courtship: He almost drowns on one date. Another involves tearing apart a dead horse. They trade bags of rattlesnake tails. He's thrilled when she snags his cheek with a fish hook.
Everything on this sweltering farm is charged with erotic electricity, the voltage rising as Linda and Bruder resist the attraction that's consuming them both. Indeed, their discipline is outdone only by the author's. Ebershoff never violates the standards of 19th-century tastes, but ironically his restraint generates more heat than all the sexual mechanics of his contemporaries.
The story takes a dark turn when Bruder moves to the Pasadena Ranch to oversee the splendid orange groves of Willis Poore, a man he served with in Germany. Linda can't understand his sudden departure, but, as always, the two of them seem incapable of talking to one another � a failing that leads to grave tragedies later on.
Eventually, after four years of silence, Bruder offers Linda a job as a cook at the orchard, and she enters a climate where passive aggression grows as bountifully as oranges.
Willis Poore and his anorexic sister preside over the Pasadena Ranch like husband and wife, with all the creepy suggestions that implies. They move through a wonderfully described upper-class society, attending hobo costume parties and fretting over ribald allusions to their peccadilloes in the gossip columns.
Their worlds should remain entirely separate, but Bruder exercises a mysterious power over Willis. The squirrelly aristocrat resists this humiliation by enlisting Linda in a Pygmalion episode that excites her fantasies and dashes Bruder's hopes. The plantation quickly grows into a thicket of hatred and passion that Linda can't possibly untangle until she's made a series of misguided decisions about her future, attaining her dreams but losing everything she really wanted.
"If there was a difference between Linda and Bruder, it was this," the narrator writes. "He believed in the cruel inevitability of fate; and she believed that the future was hers to invent."
As Andrew Jackson Blackwood pieces together this story from his agent's gossip and Bruder's legends, the choice between fate and self-invention grows ever more baffling to him � and us.
"Pasadena" will test Ebershoff's faith in the resurgence of the long literary novel. "The Corrections" and "The Blind Assassin" earned tremendous popular and critical success, but those tomes were spiked with the kind of modern, ironic wit missing from this old-style romance.
"Pasadena" is a novel to get lost in, caught up in the melodrama of saving a frosted orchard or a chilly heart. This is a land about to be covered with strips of concrete, on the edge of an economic boom that will bury one set of aristocrats and give birth to another, with painful revolutions up and down the social ladder.
Not all the pulp here is orange, but in Ebershoff's hands it's all wildly compelling and intricately drawn. If Linda and Bruder's love meets a predictable doom, it's only as predictable as the tide and just as hypnotic.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0718/p1...
That won't surprise anyone who reads his latest work, a luxurious tragedy called "Pasadena" that could sit comfortably alongside Hardy's brooding classic. Everything in this novel weeps with regret � for the loss of love and land and potential, but especially for the passing of a grand literary style. It's slow and gorgeous, full of romance and disaster, swelling with the kind of heavy symbolism that went out with scarlet A's and white whales.
What's most brilliant about "Pasadena," though, is the way the story comes to us. Its parts accumulate from shards of gossip polished into legend.
Andrew Jackson Blackwood knows that when the soldiers come back from Europe and the Pacific, they'll need houses, lots of them, and he's going to supply them. He's already made a fortune buying distressed properties during the Depression, but when he spots a rare track of empty farmland in Pasadena, he sees the potential to construct an entire neighborhood from scratch.
After a few unsuccessful attempts to negotiate with the owner, he's contacted by Cherry Nay, a slick real estate agent, who wants to make sure he hears and understands the dark history of this land. And so, over the course of several weeks, Blackwood is spellbound by the remarkable tragedy of a young woman who rose beyond her dreams but failed to catch the simple happiness she craved.
Linda Stamp was 16 when her father returned to their onion farm along the southern coast of California at the end of World War I. The family had heard nothing of his time in the service, nor of Bruder, the quiet soldier he brings home. (Think "Brude the Obscure.")
Linda meets him after staring down a shark and running out of the ocean naked carrying lobsters. So begins a smoldering romance that eventually burns both these lovers to ash.
Bruder is a sullen, intellectual man of frightening strength and patience. Though he's "won" Linda in a ghastly wartime bargain with her father, he never reveals that promise, choosing instead to earn her love through the power of his devotion. It's a peculiar courtship: He almost drowns on one date. Another involves tearing apart a dead horse. They trade bags of rattlesnake tails. He's thrilled when she snags his cheek with a fish hook.
Everything on this sweltering farm is charged with erotic electricity, the voltage rising as Linda and Bruder resist the attraction that's consuming them both. Indeed, their discipline is outdone only by the author's. Ebershoff never violates the standards of 19th-century tastes, but ironically his restraint generates more heat than all the sexual mechanics of his contemporaries.
The story takes a dark turn when Bruder moves to the Pasadena Ranch to oversee the splendid orange groves of Willis Poore, a man he served with in Germany. Linda can't understand his sudden departure, but, as always, the two of them seem incapable of talking to one another � a failing that leads to grave tragedies later on.
Eventually, after four years of silence, Bruder offers Linda a job as a cook at the orchard, and she enters a climate where passive aggression grows as bountifully as oranges.
Willis Poore and his anorexic sister preside over the Pasadena Ranch like husband and wife, with all the creepy suggestions that implies. They move through a wonderfully described upper-class society, attending hobo costume parties and fretting over ribald allusions to their peccadilloes in the gossip columns.
Their worlds should remain entirely separate, but Bruder exercises a mysterious power over Willis. The squirrelly aristocrat resists this humiliation by enlisting Linda in a Pygmalion episode that excites her fantasies and dashes Bruder's hopes. The plantation quickly grows into a thicket of hatred and passion that Linda can't possibly untangle until she's made a series of misguided decisions about her future, attaining her dreams but losing everything she really wanted.
"If there was a difference between Linda and Bruder, it was this," the narrator writes. "He believed in the cruel inevitability of fate; and she believed that the future was hers to invent."
As Andrew Jackson Blackwood pieces together this story from his agent's gossip and Bruder's legends, the choice between fate and self-invention grows ever more baffling to him � and us.
"Pasadena" will test Ebershoff's faith in the resurgence of the long literary novel. "The Corrections" and "The Blind Assassin" earned tremendous popular and critical success, but those tomes were spiked with the kind of modern, ironic wit missing from this old-style romance.
"Pasadena" is a novel to get lost in, caught up in the melodrama of saving a frosted orchard or a chilly heart. This is a land about to be covered with strips of concrete, on the edge of an economic boom that will bury one set of aristocrats and give birth to another, with painful revolutions up and down the social ladder.
Not all the pulp here is orange, but in Ebershoff's hands it's all wildly compelling and intricately drawn. If Linda and Bruder's love meets a predictable doom, it's only as predictable as the tide and just as hypnotic.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0718/p1...
March 3, 2017
I have only read 250 pages of this 450 page book and I am quitting. It is an OK read, just not a great one and I cannot really get interested in reading this book. I have been reading it for 2 weeks and just finding excuses not read at all because it is not interesting enough.
April 14, 2013
Ebershoff’s epic tale of early 20th century California is more than just a love story. It is also a look at how fate steps in to outwit even the most self-determined of characters. In this case the fate of Linda Stamp, a very determined young woman whose life becomes entangled with two very different men who end up manipulating her emotions and her life’s outcome. Besides the book’s love triangle, there is another story important to the book’s themes - the loss of the western frontier. Tying everything together is an evocative portrayal of Southern California’s early citrus empires and the romance of a long gone era. If you enjoy long sagas like Gone with the Wind or the works of Edna Ferber, give this one a chance.
September 3, 2016
Plodding through this book took way to much time so I'm not going to waste any more on a review. I slogged through 200 pages before the storyline picked up. THEN I realized that this was a not-very-convincing-retelling of Wuthering Heights. Duh! The historical references were good but it certainly was a long road to Pasadena.
April 16, 2012
Although not quite as engaging as The 19th Wife, this is still a great saga of the West. Set in post WWI, pre-drepession Pasadena, it follows the fate of a young girl promised to a soldier by her father. But love, communication, and manipulation all have funny ways of getting entangled. Ebershoff shows a vivid picture of California ranch life in this era.
August 24, 2012
Turgid. Lurid. Long. Would be an okay bad movie. Only recommended to those with a deep interest in Southern California history and then only when there are no other choices.
December 23, 2022
It took me a little while to appreciate David Ebershoff's style of writing in this novel. The novel is divided into "parts." It took me a long time to get through Part 1, and I thought about giving up on it, but decided to persist. The story seemed to be going along so slowly, and Ebershoff is very descriptive of everything. While I liked that as it really helped me visualize the story more, it also made the story move slowly and took a long time to get through. However, I realized that he was really setting the stage for the characters that would consume the book.
There are three main characters in the book: Bruder, Linda Stamp, and Willis Poore. The most important character (and who the book revolves around) is Linda. She was born a fisher girl from southern California, Baden-Baden-by-the-Sea. I was actually curious if this was a real place ... I googled it, but found nothing in the state of California. Bruder is a young man who saved her father's life during World War I who comes to her small community and works at her father's onion farm. Willis Poore is the wealthy son of the owner of a prosperous orange farm.
I grew to really appreciate the style of writing and the detail in the book. I felt like I got to know all of the characters ... even the lesser characters in the book. I probably would have given it five stars if the first part hadn't taken me so long to read. If you like historical fiction, and want to get a feel for southern California in the early 1900s, this book may be for you. The characters were very interesting and well thought out as were the two main settings and the plot.
There are three main characters in the book: Bruder, Linda Stamp, and Willis Poore. The most important character (and who the book revolves around) is Linda. She was born a fisher girl from southern California, Baden-Baden-by-the-Sea. I was actually curious if this was a real place ... I googled it, but found nothing in the state of California. Bruder is a young man who saved her father's life during World War I who comes to her small community and works at her father's onion farm. Willis Poore is the wealthy son of the owner of a prosperous orange farm.
I grew to really appreciate the style of writing and the detail in the book. I felt like I got to know all of the characters ... even the lesser characters in the book. I probably would have given it five stars if the first part hadn't taken me so long to read. If you like historical fiction, and want to get a feel for southern California in the early 1900s, this book may be for you. The characters were very interesting and well thought out as were the two main settings and the plot.
November 9, 2025
The title of this book is a bit of a misnomer. Yes, it does take place in Pasadena and the surrounding area, but it is not really about Pasadena. It is about a romance that kept getting thwarted because the two people involved were almost always unwilling to tell each other what they really felt. It didn't help that they were also hiding promises they had made with other people to gain land or wealth.
Since we follow the characters for several decades, we do learn about the growing pains and dreams of the community. The book starts before electricity and paved roads were common. Then land developers and a rich elite made or brought in huge quantities of money.
Wherever there are wealthy people, there are also very poor people who serve and are abused by the wealthy. For women, this often led to unwanted pregnancies and visits to doctors to eliminate the pregnancies and venereal diseases the men caused.
Many people have compared this book to "East of Eden" and "Wuthering Heights." Those are reasonable comparisons. There are rich people who waste their wealth and poor people who rise to heights no one ever dreamed they would reach. There are also dark, brooding, emotionally stunted lovers. If you want that kind of Sreinbeck/Bronte read, you'll probably like this book. Just don't go into it looking for many historical or geographical insights.
Since we follow the characters for several decades, we do learn about the growing pains and dreams of the community. The book starts before electricity and paved roads were common. Then land developers and a rich elite made or brought in huge quantities of money.
Wherever there are wealthy people, there are also very poor people who serve and are abused by the wealthy. For women, this often led to unwanted pregnancies and visits to doctors to eliminate the pregnancies and venereal diseases the men caused.
Many people have compared this book to "East of Eden" and "Wuthering Heights." Those are reasonable comparisons. There are rich people who waste their wealth and poor people who rise to heights no one ever dreamed they would reach. There are also dark, brooding, emotionally stunted lovers. If you want that kind of Sreinbeck/Bronte read, you'll probably like this book. Just don't go into it looking for many historical or geographical insights.
July 30, 2017
Beautiful description and narrative. Star crossed lovers who just can't seem to give into it. A character would say something pretty critical at a point and then later it was as if the author had forgotten he'd mentioned this concrete statement and the later scene didn't seem to fit with what had previously been written. Some love relationships and some medical conditions, or lack thereof, seemed unbelievable but maybe that's poetic license or author's discretion- after all this is a work of fiction. Worth the time.
August 25, 2017
I wanted to like this book; Pasedena, being an interesting placement. Its a great story line, author is a good writer. It started out very good....but then it went on and on and on; jumped around and very confusing. Character traits and personalities got all mixed up. Had several intriguing mysteries going, but spent several chapters before revealing so they fizzled out. For me, I had to see it through but it was exhausting.
December 12, 2017
I think David Ebershoff is great. But the central tension of this book makes me want to chew holes through walls. It would have been half as long if each character had been direct. “This is Willis’ baby,” for example. Sheez. I get it the theme of secrecy, “destiny,” whatever. But the characters’ complete dedication to maintaining ignorance of their own and others’ feelings was exhausting by halfway through.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 24, 2020
I had such hopes for this novel and anticipated a sweeping historical tale of life in California in the early 20th century with a gripping family saga involved, but instead was disappointed by the lack of depth in the characters and how little I cared for any of them at the end of 500 pages. There was never a clear reason why Bruder and Linda didn't proclaim their love for one another, why she married Captain Poole, and why Cherry cared so much? I kept with it but really, it's not worth it.
August 1, 2022
Wow. I don’t give a lot of five star reviews, but this book has it all—deep, complex characters; interesting history and social commentary on that era; a gorgeous setting the author brings to life as its own (important) character in the story; a riveting tale. Best of all, it leaves you with lots to think about. I could turn right around and start reading it all over again today, honestly, and I reread very few books.
March 15, 2018
This book was way too long and way too dull. I read it because I had read David Ebershoff's book "The 19th Wife," which was very good. It was very disappointing and had no likeable characters.
It showed both women and men at their worst. Life is too short and there are too many good books out there--skip this one.
It showed both women and men at their worst. Life is too short and there are too many good books out there--skip this one.
November 14, 2018
Picturesque view of early California
Being a woman who was raised in California North of Pasadena and along the coast I was drawn to the title and then a story that was filled with full bodied characters and a visual presence of early California! A great read! These characters will remain with me for some time!
Being a woman who was raised in California North of Pasadena and along the coast I was drawn to the title and then a story that was filled with full bodied characters and a visual presence of early California! A great read! These characters will remain with me for some time!
January 29, 2020
I have to say this book was not to my taste. I could not relate to any of the characters, I found them quite annoying. The main story line could have been ok, but the way it was told did not work for me. Blackwood did not seem to fit very well. The authors reference to Wuthering Heights should have been a warning to me as I found that similarly annoying.
May 30, 2022
The novel was show to start but picked up speed at the end. The characters find that you don't get the life you've dreamed of, but you get the one based on the choices you make. Some interesting twists occur in the plot line which helped to move the story along but the ending leaves you with unanswered questions.
May 14, 2017
An interesting time in California history
The story was a good one going back and forth in time but such a sad waste of life's. I think it would have liked it more if it was shorter. It dragged a bit.
The story was a good one going back and forth in time but such a sad waste of life's. I think it would have liked it more if it was shorter. It dragged a bit.
July 12, 2017
Pasadena was a slow go for me. Prior to reading this book, my only connection to Pasadena was watching snippets of the Rose Bowl parade. I enjoyed learning more about the history of Southern California; however, I couldn't connect with the characters which is a negative for me.
I highly recommend The 19th Wife and The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff. Both are better examples of his writing talent and character development.
I highly recommend The 19th Wife and The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff. Both are better examples of his writing talent and character development.
May 31, 2018
Enthralling storytelling with deep love of California
Being a native of our Golden State, I felt so connected to the geography, the natural plants and terrain of this whole beautiful story. I never lost interest. Much to learn and appreciate about the commercialization of our land, interweaving the various cultures and their foods...from Mexican to German. A profound treatise on the effects of WW1, and WW2 on California and its citizens. Can’t beat PASADENA for a wonderful read...
Being a native of our Golden State, I felt so connected to the geography, the natural plants and terrain of this whole beautiful story. I never lost interest. Much to learn and appreciate about the commercialization of our land, interweaving the various cultures and their foods...from Mexican to German. A profound treatise on the effects of WW1, and WW2 on California and its citizens. Can’t beat PASADENA for a wonderful read...
Displaying 1 - 30 of 124 reviews