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Rich People in Santa Barbara
Published by Rare Bird Books
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
Table of Contents
About The Book
The intersecting worlds of the two novellas in Rich People in Santa Barbra are worlds of privilege, worlds with eerie shadows beneath the surface.
In Montecito Peak, Barbara Palmer, who is very rich—“I was born lucky”—is a good mother to fourteen-year-old Betsy, the guiding light of Bird of Paradise Books, an involved member of the Concours d’Elegance committee. But emotionally she’s treading water. Her husband is a peevish alcoholic. He’s a terrible father. No one would think less of her if she divorced him. But he would still always be in her life being a drag. Then one day Barbara falls in love with Mike Brooke. A reciprocated love. The odious husband has to go.
In The Polo Club, Lydia Graham is a garden designer who grew up in Montecito. Her husband is a longboard surfer who’s good at making money. He’s a great father to their fifteen-year-old daughter. It’s a happy marriage. Then Hunter Evans, a man whom Lydia knew when she was fourteen and he was thirty-two, returns to Santa Barbara. Socially connected, still terribly attractive—and a dubious character—he rents a condo at the Polo Club. He understands Lydia all too well, and suddenly he’s a danger to her marriage. This cannot be allowed.
In Montecito Peak, Barbara Palmer, who is very rich—“I was born lucky”—is a good mother to fourteen-year-old Betsy, the guiding light of Bird of Paradise Books, an involved member of the Concours d’Elegance committee. But emotionally she’s treading water. Her husband is a peevish alcoholic. He’s a terrible father. No one would think less of her if she divorced him. But he would still always be in her life being a drag. Then one day Barbara falls in love with Mike Brooke. A reciprocated love. The odious husband has to go.
In The Polo Club, Lydia Graham is a garden designer who grew up in Montecito. Her husband is a longboard surfer who’s good at making money. He’s a great father to their fifteen-year-old daughter. It’s a happy marriage. Then Hunter Evans, a man whom Lydia knew when she was fourteen and he was thirty-two, returns to Santa Barbara. Socially connected, still terribly attractive—and a dubious character—he rents a condo at the Polo Club. He understands Lydia all too well, and suddenly he’s a danger to her marriage. This cannot be allowed.
About The Author
ELIZABETH GILCHRIST was born in Santa Barbara, California and lived much of her life there. She was head room mother at Marymount School, and an editor of Destination Wine Country Magazine. Neither of her two previous novels, Your Cheatin’ Heart and Second Chances, was set in Santa Barbara. Rich People in Santa Barbara is her Santa Barbara book, the one she’s always wanted to write. She now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Product Details
- Publisher: Rare Bird Books (February 24, 2026)
- Length: 224 pages
- ISBN13: 9781644285367
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Raves and Reviews
In Rich People in Santa Barbara, Elizabeth Gilchrist captures the intoxicating, claustrophobic world of the coastal elite, where the light is pervasively golden, the wine endlessly flows, and the cost of happiness is just beyond reach. Barbara and Lydia are women on the edge, their lives and relationships as meticulously constructed as the gardens they tend. Gilchrist’s prose is lush, vibrant and her characters are unforgettable.
– Adam Cushman, author of Cut
These are two wonderful, engaging novellas about the all-but-secret world of Santa Barbara society of the not-so-distant past. These people are still around behind their gates and high hedges. Beneath the snobbery and scandal, there is something eerie, something noir. Elizabeth Gilchrist knew this world well, and she writes of it with sympathy, humor, and ruthless honesty. A great read.
– Kent Anderson, author of Sympathy for the Devil, Night Dogs, Green Sun,
and Liquor, Guns & Ammo.
Elizabeth Gilchrist portrays the lives of characters with generational wealth in Santa Barbara’s coastal city through meticulous descriptions of settings, bringing the characters to life as they navigate life’s vicissitudes.
– Elsie Augustave, author of The Roving Tree
A smell of eucalyptus and salt air, morning fogs, mountains in the distance, lust, adultery and unsolved murders. If Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles has been called "the great wrong place," Elizabeth Gilchrist's Santa Barbara runs a close second. She is its bard. Her selection of period details is impeccable, her wit and judgment playful and subtle. Her wealthy characters, seemingly proper and socially responsible, listen to the best jazz, eat the most sensible food, drive the hippest cars, and move in an atmosphere of entitled amorality and dread.
– Phillip Lopate, author of Two Marriages, editor of Art of the Personal Essay
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Rich People in Santa Barbara
Published by Rare Bird Books
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
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