On a hot July night in 1969, Cassady and Kyle sneak into one of MGM’s magical surreal Backlots. Exploring the astonishing decrepit sets, they encounter actors long dead and at Tara, on the old forgotten decaying Gone With the Wind set, they meet Scarlett (Vivian Leigh) and Ashley (Leslie Howard). This leads to phenomena of paranormal experiences beyond anything they could have imagined.

The ghostly territories within the Backlot are initially as earth shaking as they are mysterious. One boy struggles with the horrors and legacy of slavery while confronting the evil in the wonderland netherworld that they both initially embraced. Along with a gritty realistic account of growing up in West Los Angeles, this story invokes a lost period in time that could have only happened in one place in the entire world: Culver City, California.

With Culver City Brant Vickers has written a wonderful uncompromising Young Adult story. Immediately captivating, surrealistic, and authentically written, while portraying the craziness of the late sixties and early seventies, The novel interweaves wild teenage adventures, magical realism, and important life situations that test the boys’ remarkably close friendship and eventually means the difference between life and death.