It's 1981 and Shelby Sloane gets a canary yellow Mustang convertible as a graduation present. She plans an odyssey to find her mother who left her many years earlier. When Shelby's former best friend Gina asks to come along, Shelby reluctantly agrees.

When they see a young woman hitchhiking on the side of a country road, they don't want to pick her up. They turn their gaze away. But days later, they find her again. Candy gets in. She needs to get to Paradise – that's Paradise, California. But she is beset by dangers on a scale beyond the wildest imaginings of Shelby and Gina. She sucks them into her treacherous world and her own frightful journey.

The ride that began with high spirits and good humour proceeds into the darkest backroads of America, when Shelby, Candy and Gina are forced to make real moral choices that have critical consequences for their future, and by their ordeals they take a very different journey.

Paullina Simons was born in Leningrad, and emigrated to the United States in 1973. Her novels include The Bronze Horseman, The Bridge to Holy Cross and The Summer Garden. She lives close to New York with her husband and four children.

Paullina was once again great fun to talk to, not only about her new novel, but about the ideas and process that went into creating it. We also talked about life before and after her leaving Russia, and the tragedy of the disintegration of the former Soviet Union.

Definitely well worth a listen!