THE LAST OF THE CALIFORNIA GIRLS: a doomed love story

David Levine: He was a New Yorker, born and bred. In 1965, at the beginning of his senior year in high school, his father was transferred to the San Fernando Valley. David was appalled: he belonged on a subway, not a surfboard. And everyone knew that California sunshine rotted the brain cells, melted down everything you'd ever known or believed. Sherry Gentry: her blond hair floated to her waist. She drove a pale blue MG convertible and lived in a sprawling stucco hacienda with a red tile roof. She was a cheerleader, she loved the Beach Boys, she was a goddess--all slender, electric motion. She embodied every daydream every boy has ever had--every fantasy, every fairy tale, every myth. No two people could have been more unalike. Was that why David Levine fell so deeply, so obsessively, so blindly in love with The Last of the California Girls?