Fact and fiction collide in Rachel Stark’s novel ‘Perris, California’

I had brought my copy of "Perris, California" to Perris, California.

That's the novel released earlier this year that's set in Perris — our Perris, not the one in Texas or the one in France.

A story of poverty, hope and resilience, "Perris" bounces between 1992 and 1999 as we follow two women, Tessa and Melissa, first as friends at Perris High and then as they reunite as adults under changed circumstances. It's a window into the lives of lower-class women.

It's gotten excellent reviews, although I don't know what they think of it in Perris. I drove there the other day, hardcover in my passenger seat, to take a couple of photos and eat lunch. And also to drop by the library.

I intended to ask if people had been checking out the book or discussing it in book clubs — only to learn that the library is closed for renovations , which led to its own column. Bonus!

"Perris, California" author Rachel Stark spent her childhood in Perris in the 1990s. I met Stark, now a Colorado resident, in April when she was interviewed in public at Riverside's Culver Center for the Arts by fellow writer Susan Straight .

I bought "Perris, California" — released by a publisher in New York City, New York — and found her female-centered story compelling.

And I took notes on Stark's use of IE proper names.

I emailed her in August to ask if she'd tell me which places were real and which weren't, and share any memories associated with them. To my delight, she agreed. And she included an important caveat.

"Memory is fallible. I write fiction. It's possible I have misremembered the specific location of these places from my past," Stark writes, "but the feelings and stories I carry about my connections to them are honest, earned and meaningful to me."

You won't be startled to learn that Perris High is an actual school. St. James, a Catholic school from which Melissa transfers, and which Stark attended as well, is likewise real.

Riverside, Indio, Beaumont, Barton Flats, Lake Arrowhead and Hemet are name-checked in passing. It's always a minor thrill to find place names we know in fiction, isn't it? Enough with the East Coast or Hollywood. Show us our backyard.

Another local city's name is dropped in colorful fashion. A wife finds out her husband "had been seeing some barely legal waitress out in Temecula near his construction site." Someone should alert the Temecula morals police.

Ellis Avenue and Highway 74 get nods, as do the Gavilan Hills and Box Springs Mountains. A "sophomore-year field trip to the Old Perris Train Station" is recalled by one character.

That 1892 depot is very real and very much with us, thankfully, protected since 1994 on the National Register of Historic Places. It's in the Queen Anne style, made of red brick, with a turret. Not enough buildings have turrets.

I'd seen the depot before and will see it again. This time I was admiring it from the parking lot of Chicken King.

The humble strip mall restaurant is cited in the book, not for its food but for its arcade machines, like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong.

"Bobby had the reigning highest scores on all three machines at the Chicken King down by the old train station on First and Main," as a character puts it.

Stark said at her April event that she's a fan of the restaurant. I asked her what I should order. "You've got to get the chicken. The fried chicken," Stark advised.

Coincidentally, "stark" would be a good word to describe Chicken King. Mostly a takeout place, the interior has a few booths and virtually no decor. The farthest reach where the arcade games likely once stood is bare. My quarters stayed in my pocket.

The menu has Chinese food, pizza and fried chicken. I got the fried chicken, which arrived freshly prepared. It really was good.

Family Basket gets a "Perris" shout-out. In a flashback scene, Tessa's mom "turned into the Family Basket drive-through and ordered an Orange Bang and paid with the change she pulled from her pocket," handing the drink to her young daughter and saying, "It's got orange juice and egg whites in it. It's good growing food. Good breakfast for a kid."

Before we call Child Protective Services, let's hear from Stark.

She tells me she grew up in a rural, undeveloped part of Perris. Her childhood conception of the town was essentially the route to St. James School, which she attended from kindergarten through eighth grade.

"We took Highway 74 and passed the Circle K and Family Basket," Stark says. "My favorite, go-to meal from Family Basket was an order of fries with a large Orange Bang."

But "Perris," remember, is fiction, not nonfiction. Novelists can invent things. Beth's Donuts, at which one scene in "Perris" is set, never existed.

"A mile or so from Family Basket, up on the left was a little shopping center with a movie rental place and a donut shop," Stark says. "I thought of this donut shop when I wrote the donut shop scene in the novel, but it was not named Beth's Donuts and it was not placed where I placed it in the novel."

That said, if someone named Beth wants to open a namesake donut shop, my guess is that Perris would not stop her.

Jenny's Diner is another "Perris" setting. A character on her way to Hollywood from Oklahoma runs out of money in Perris, gets "a temporary waitressing job at Jenny's Diner" and never leaves.

Jenny's existed until about a year ago. It appears to have been a casualty of the COVID upheaval.

"I used to order the giant cinnamon roll at Jenny's," Stark confides. "I'd always eat too much of it and have a stomach ache after."

Stark has been back to Perris since her novel was finished. Her mom still lives in the same house. But when Stark has visited, she's deliberately traveled from Riverside through Gavilan Hills or Mead Valley rather than drive Highway 74.

Says Stark: "I don't want to see the developments or the changes made to these places that are still so alive in my memories and important to me."

In that sense, she'll always have Perris.

David Allen always has Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Email phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow on X.