"Tart is my favorite word. I love what it stirs in the mind -- the synesthesia of flavor mixing with colors: reds, oranges, and apple-greens, gleaming with cheap temptation, like Jolly Ranchers. It's been a goal of my twenties to live a tart life; I want everything I do to have that sharpness, that edge of almost-too-out-there to be tasty, but not quite."

Meet Claudia Bloom. She's having one of those years. First she steals her ex's VW bus and drives it from Austin to Santa Cruz, where it promptly explodes. Next she lets herself be rescued by Clay, a cute DJ on a motorcycle, falls hard and meets his somehow-never-mentioned-estranged wife while searching frantically for her panties. She tries to forget about Clay and focus on her tenuous new career teaching theater at UC Santa Cruz, only to discover Clay's wife is her colleague and his mother is her boss. Could it get any worse? When her neo-Deadhead cousin shows up with a horse-size mutt, Rex, and the two of them take up residence on her couch, Claudia's pretty sure things have hit rock bottom.

Set in the uber-hip beach town of Santa Cruz, this novel explores the rocky terrain of family secrets, forbidden fruit and all things Tart.