mother

She shops for groceries at a neighborhood supermarket in suburban Sacramento, usually in the company of a plainclothes state policewoman who could pass for her sister, and for months she went unrecognized. Only lately have people begun to take note of who she is.

As First Lady of California, Gloria Deukmejian might have passed her shopping list on to someone else, but she said no thanks , she preferred doing the family marketing herself–as the woman who is listed on the Deukmejian joint tax return as “housewife” has always done.

When their 18-year-old son, George, the second of their three children, went to UC Berkeley last September, Gloria Deukmejian, like any mother might, visited the dormitory room he had arranged to share with two friends, and encountered other students who rather excitedly wondered whether she had heard the governor’s son was going to be staying on their floor. Why no, she hadn’t, she said at first, straight-faced.

Parents’ Night And when it came time for Parents’ Night at Rio Americano High School, where their youngest, Andrea, who’ll be 16 next month, is a sophomore, the state’s First Couple stood in line–like everyone else. So unassuming were the Deukmejians that another mother, who had been in a rush, didn’t realize she had accidentally bumped into them until the principal announced he was “honored to have Gov. and Mrs. George Deukmejian” in the audience–and they stood up.

Such is the low-key, low-profile life style of Gloria May Deukmejian, who pursues privacy with the same driven intensity that her husband has courted votes for two decades.

Now, after California’s eight mate-less years under former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., she has become successor–an Administration once removed–to the peripatetic Nancy Reagan, who even then was forever at her husband’s side and in the public eye.

Yet despite George Deukmejian’s 22 years in public office–four in the Assembly, 12 in the state Senate, four more as state attorney general, and with his current four-year term half over– she is still Gov. Deukmejian’s wife who?

Meet Gloria Deukmejian–at 52, she has been married to George (whom she had met at a big family wedding) nearly 28 years–and the most striking thing, indeed the surprise, is her sense of humor. It is quick, spontaneous–and rather irreverent.

She’s somewhat taller than you might expect, a solid-looking 5-feet-6 or so. Photographs, however, do not do her justice. They fail to reflect her vivid coloring: merry black-brown eyes, apple cheeks and flawless olive skin. She has the kind of looks a slash of bright red lipstick only enhances.

B.T. Collins, Brown’s last chief of staff, a Republican, now executive vice president for Kidder-Peabody in Sacramento, experienced her humor more than a year ago. They had corresponded, mentioning a lunch, and at one point she hand-wrote: “I would like to meet you but George won’t let me. He thinks you’ll corrupt me–but then I don’t always listen to George!” And they lunched.

‘Surprise Roaster’ She also floored them at a roast of her husband in Sacramento–a benefit dinner for the Coro Foundation, a national public affairs training program, and the California Journal, a magazine about governmental affairs. The “surprise roaster,” the presumably staid Republican’s wife, more than held her own against the likes of State Treasurer Jesse Unruh and State Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp.

Donning a Groucho Marx mask–a jab at the dark, mustachioed lineup of her husband’s top aides–Gloria Saatjian Deukmejian, first-generation Armenian-American like her husband, told how George was a man who “never forgets birthdays or anniversaries.” One year she got a screwdriver, another a wrench set. “As a result I have a complete tool set.”

The governor was surprised. So, perhaps from another point of view, was the audience. “She stood up there against her image,” recalled 31-year-old Robin Kramer, Coro’s director and a former aide of the Southern California Democratic Party. “I didn’t know her at all, other than she was this quiet, churchly lady who lived in Long Beach. She was not timid, and she was not square.”

Nor did she appear intimidated Dec. 5 on “Look Who’s Talking,” a morning television show, part listener call-in, part interview, on KCRW, the Sacramento NBC affiliate. In her first, and, thus far, only solo television appearance, she defied image by talking about an issue–speaking out, as her husband had in a press conference the day before, on behalf of the death penalty–while sidestepping questions on government cutbacks.

‘Just Moved In’ And she candidly discussed her husband’s future. A second term? “Of course,” she smiled. “I just moved in.” Beyond the governorship? “We’ve really given many many years to political office. I think not . . . one more term and I think it’s our turn (to relax).”

Yes she had heard, “they do have a house in Washington, a little different than ours,” and smiled. And she’s not interested? “No, not at all.”

The next day in the anteroom of the governor’s office in San Francisco, Gloria Deukmejian was back to her image–the self-described “traditional wife.” Her voice is mellow, soothing. At times her answers sound almost memorized.

“I just believe in everything he does, and I just believe that anything I can do to further the cause I will do.”

Do they ever disagree on issues? “Oh occasionally–but I’ll never tell .”

Traditional Role Has she ever tried to sway him? “Have you ever tried to sway an attorney over to your side? . . . “

Elaborating on the traditional-wife theme, Gloria Deukmejian, an art school graduate, who came of age before Gloria Steinem had a cause and women’s liberation a name, said she simply feels “more comfortable” with the traditional. “Like family, three teen-agers (actually Leslie, the oldest, a junior at the University of Colorado in Boulder, turned 20 last September), dogs (three beagles), neighbors, organizations, some relating to the family, some relating to volunteer work . . . like the Bluebirds, Campfires, oh yes PTA, I put my time in all those things.”

No Interviews at Home As comfortable as she is at home, she does not allow interviews at home, whether in Sacramento or her native Long Beach. Home is for privacy, for family. As the governor’s wife she’s been interviewed in his Sacramento office, in the sunny glass-encased coffee shop at the Long Beach Hyatt Regency or in Long Beach’s St. Mary’s Community Hospital gift shop, still dressed in her pink volunteer’s smock. And she just about never allows more than 45 minutes.

She is easiest talking about family. “Our oldest is majoring in communications and she is interested in the public relations aspect. Our youngest daughter, at 15, I don’t think too many of them know what they want to do, other than meet Rick Springfield, Matt Dillon and all those people. She can be very dramatic at times. And our son, he doesn’t know what. . . . They are sort of very independent thinkers.

“We’ve been fortunate, we’ve never really had any great problems with them,” she said in response to a question.

She said she does not know what she has done right. “I have heard of people doing the same thing as I. It hasn’t happened that way for them.” But she added with a laugh that she knows how to say no. “They say I know how to say no too often but you can’t be afraid to. . . . Later they respect you for it. I’ve had comments come back.”

Like Betty Ford, Gloria Deukmejian has had the burden of raising her children much of the time on her own. Only the governor’s wife never viewed that–or their commuter marriage–a burden.

Baby Comes Early For about a decade, from the time Leslie was of school age until George Deukmejian got elected attorney general and used the Los Angeles office as his base of operation, she raised the children from Monday morning through Thursday nights, and sometimes Friday during the legislative session. When it came time to give birth to Andrea, her next-door neighbors drove her. The baby was earlier than expected, and George, a state senator then, was in Sacramento.

It is like a litany among family and close friends, that most protective network that surrounds Gloria Deukmejian, and you hear it constantly: Gloria never gets angry or upset. Gloria never complains–be it about parental burdens or her husband’s rather paltry (by comparison to other states) $49,100-a-year gubernatorial salary, or vacations spent in their Long Beach backyard. “She doesn’t bitch,” said Darlene Thornton-May, the former next-door neighbor and one of her closest friends. Anna Ashjian, Deukmejian’s sister, said the last real vacation they had was in Hawaii where he had a speaking engagement “and they took the kids.”

Alice Deukmejian, who will be 87 on Valentine’s Day, said it best: Gloria, she said upon her son’s election two years ago, has “the patience of Job.”

As the parent at hand, as her own mother was to a degree when she was growing up, Gloria Deukmejian became, of necessity, the stricter one–while carrying out the general’s orders. “And also George, he’s very softhearted, especially with the girls. . . . It’s funny,” she said with a smile. “I can raise my voice. I would have to do it several times. When George raises his voice, he has that very deep voice. Only once ! Just like with the dogs. Same way. They listen to him.”

The middle child and only daughter of the late Krikor and Mary Saatjian (pronounced Say-chen), Gloria Saatjian was born Nov. 1, 1932, in Long Beach and, though raised in a traditional way, hardly came from an average immigrant family.

Her father Krikor, a carpenter’s son who grew up in Aintab, Turkey, graduated with honors from Yale, Class of 1914, became a civil engineer, worked on the Panama Canal, and for most of his career was a middle-management executive in the purchasing department at Texaco in downtown Los Angeles–and an active member of the Petroleum Club in Long Beach.

Today, Gloria Deukmejian’s elder brother Clarence Saatjian, 56, is chief of thermal power engineering for Southern California Edison, and her younger brother, the Rev. Lloyd Saatjian, 50, is Santa Ana district superintendent of the United Methodist Church, responsible for 57 congregations in the Orange County area. (As minister of a Palm Springs congregation for 17 years, he was in the Coachella Valley in 1968 at the time of the table-grape boycott in the dispute between the growers and Cesar Chavez and his migrant farm workers. In the critical years between 1970 and 1973, Saatjian served as mediator. He still is the arbitrator on certain contracts.)

Graduates of USC Both Saatjian brothers are graduates of USC.

Gloria had an interest in art that included years of piano lessons and classical recitals–Lloyd has said she might have become a concert pianist. After graduation in 1950 from Long Beach Poly High School, she went to the old Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles and completed the three-year course in interior design. “Then I got out and never did pursue it. I guess I just didn’t have that real interest. . . . Someday, maybe, I’ll get back to it.”

Instead, having already taken some typing and shorthand in high school, she took a job as a secretary for Howard Zink Seat Covers, a large car-seat upholstering company in Long Beach. She worked there for several years until just about the time she met George.

Diane Hansen Roslee, a Chouinard classmate who was maid-of-honor at Gloria and George’s wedding, noted that it wasn’t easy getting a job in the art world in the ‘50s. “So she went to work for the seat-cover king. Closest to home was the easier thing to do. They (the family) didn’t want her to live in an apartment or something, because the family was so close. And she was perfectly happy. . . . Gloria was more domesticated.”

Occasionally while at Chouinard, said Roslee, who owns a dress boutique south of Tucson, Gloria would “spend the weekend with me at my apartment. But they (the family) were very protective of her. They made sure she was a good girl. . . . “

Five Languages Krikor Saatjian, who came to America in 1911 as a scholarship student, spoke five languages–Armenian, Turkish, French, English and German, his English learned from a Christian missionary–and helped pay his way by working in the school cafeteria.

During that early period, he also served with the Army Corps of Engineers at the Panama Canal. Meanwhile in 1915, back in his hometown, his family was being dispersed, and worse, during the Armenian massacre. He volunteered for service in France during World War I, rose to the rank of sergeant, and while in the Army found his mentor in Clarence Olmstead (for whom his eldest would be named). Olmstead brought him to Texaco.

The war over, Saatjian, the eldest of four brothers, set about bringing his family to America. The immediate family had escaped the massacre, but as Eddie Saatjian, the youngest brother, recalled: “After the war was over we returned home. . . . The rest of the family were either gone or dead, or we didn’t know where they were.”

On Gloria’s mother’s side today are uncles, aunts and first cousins living in Beirut.

In 1921, Krikor brought his brother Charles; in 1923, his mother, Sadie; the last two brothers, Jack and Eddie, and in the party his future wife, Mary, a distant cousin 13 years his junior, whom he married a year later– after she started learning English.

After settling briefly in Lockport, Ill., where Olmstead ran a small Texaco refinery, Texaco bought California Petroleum, “and within less than a year,” Eddie recalled, “we were here, the whole gang of us.”

Throughout the Depression, none of the brothers was without a job, and there was always a decent car in the garage. By 1941, the car was a Cadillac. Until they married, Krikor Saatjian’s brothers lived in his house, a large Victorian-style 2 1/2-story frame house on a corner in central Long Beach.

Until her marriage, Gloria Deukmejian shared a bedroom with her grandmother Sadie. In 1941, when Eddie and Alice Saatjian married, there was a portent for her own future. Before coming to California to meet Eddie, Alice Saatjian lived across the street from the Deukmejian family in Menands, N.Y., outside Albany, the state capital. She remembered George, “a beautiful, handsome boy. He had rosy cheeks.” In this intertwining of family-tree branches, Alice also was a second cousin of Isabelle Melkasian. It was at Isabelle’s wedding in San Marino on May 27, 1956 that Gloria and George met. Isabelle’s mother knew the Deukmejians too. (George and Gloria were married Feb. 16, 1957. His sister’s husband, Noubar Ashjian, is Gloria’s second cousin once removed.)

Mary Saatjian–the person Gloria Deukmejian had been closest to, the woman she confided in and is said to emulate–provided the warmth. “An Armenian mother who cared for her children . . . a saint,” said Lloyd. “An amazing cook. She didn’t have the education my dad did, but her relationship to her children and anyone who came into our home was one of love, caring and generosity.”

With her husband at work from 6 in the morning until 6 at night, she was “the one we told the bad things to,” said Clarence, “she was our confidante.”

One gets fleeting, cozy images of Gloria’s girlhood. Isabelle remembers taking the Red Car down to Long Beach with her twin, Annabelle, for weekends at the beach, and Gloria at 10, a junior bridesmaid at her Aunt Alice’s wedding in their home, getting out the carpet-sweeper to clean up a batch of the inevitable pistachio nuts. And whenever the Saatjians would visit her house they would pile out of the Cadillac bearing a box of See’s candy.

Lloyd remembers her getting up early in the morning, before anyone else in the house, practicing piano, and accompanying him at recitals while he played the violin.

And Diane, for whom Gloria would name her third child, Andrea Diane, remembers weekends at Gloria’s house:

“Every time I would come, her mother would tell us our fortunes. She always made something special–meat rolled up in grape leaves and a dessert, baklava, and after dinner, over Turkish coffee, she would tell us our fortunes. Later I realized she knew everything that was going on in our lives, and what we wanted to hear something about a tall, dark, handsome stranger that was coming into our lives.”

Diane also remembered how Gloria would have a new dress before big family weddings, because invariably there was someone they wanted her to meet. The girls never talked politics.

“I happen to come from a Middle Eastern heritage and ancestry. In my background and culture . . . ladies were always sort of kept in the background,” Gov. Deukmejian was saying lightly at a reception honoring his women appointees. “The husbands would go out in front and the ladies would follow behind; they would take care of the things at home. . . . It was always a very peaceful relationship.”

Deukmejian was explaining why Gloria was not in attendance. The joke was that ever since his wife had seen Queen Elizabeth walking ahead of Prince Philip on the royal visit to California, and had spoken about it, he wasn’t taking her “to any more of these.”

The joke notwithstanding, the Deukmejians always had that peaceful relationship.

In the first two years of their marriage, he worked as a deputy county counsel before setting up his own practice. They lived in a small apartment near the Crenshaw district for about a year, and she took a job as a secretary in the public relations department of the California Bank.

Moved to Apartment Later, they moved to an apartment in Long Beach, and she “commuted from Long Beach to Los Angeles. After a while there was the traffic and all, it was very tiring . . . “ and she quit. In 1959, Deukmejian opened a law office in Belmont Shore. The Ashjians remember that Gloria’s father bought Deukmejian his desk. Meanwhile, he plunged into community life, becoming active in the Lions. And she joined the Lady Lions.

In 1960, they bought the rather modest house they still live in Belmont Shore–today driving past one sees a mustard-colored house, second from the corner, with a large picture window and lamp in front.

Her husband’s entry into politics came as a surprise to Gloria Deukmejian. “There wasn’t any mention of politics at the beginning.” But she went along. As she said on the Sacramento television show: “I just said, ‘Whatever you would like to do.’ It’s better to have a husband happy at the job that he’s doing, doing something that he enjoys.”

She’s very much in tune with his career. Ask in the private interview what about it has given her the most satisfaction, and after saying she doesn’t “know where to begin there ,” she talks about his “transformation” of state finances from deficit to surplus. And the biggest disappointment?

A Lost Race “Losing the one attorney general’s race years ago. Remember that one? It was a four-man (GOP primary) race, and that was the last (loss).”

Gloria Deukmejian is down-to-earth, unpretentious, the same person she has always been. “I don’t think you will hear one negative”–it is all a constant refrain. She doesn’t drink–”if you see a glass in her hand it’s tonic or diet soda,” said Aunt Alice. She doesn’t swear. And she is content.

“I don’t think Gloria feels she’s given up anything,” said Joan Lucas, wife of Judge Malcolm M. Lucas, Deukmejian’s first, and, thus far, only appointment to the California Supreme Court. “She’s a very happy, secure person. I’m sure she has a lot of problems that she doesn’t discuss; but I can’t think of her having any big problems.”

Joan Lucas has known Gloria casually since high school and better since their husbands formed Lucas, Lucas & Deukmejian in 1963. “She doesn’t discuss other political people or wives, or anything like that, ever. Gloria is a very refined person, very classy–and closemouthed. “

She is an excellent listener. “She’s always a lady,” said Willie Tauscher, a fellow hospital volunteer who’s known her 20 years.

“I’ve had a great deal of trauma over the years,” said Darlene Thornton-May, “and there is no more stauncher friend. When I get down, she’d say, ‘You do what you have to do.’ ”

There is a genuine niceness. When decorators Dennis Murphy and June Given first went up to see the Sacramento residence–purchased with surplus funds from the governor’s inaugural and which will be given to the next governor and successors, or sold with the proceeds going to charity–she met them at the airplane gate. Moreover, said Murphy, though she wanted to move in during the last week in August to prepare Andrea for school, “she never once applied pressure about getting it done unlike a lot of clients.”

When she hosted the luncheons for the Western governors’ wives in Palm Springs she went out of her way to invite others along who had helped her make the social events a success. And when her mother was dying in December, 1983, she stayed at the governor’s side to host the annual Christmas party before rushing to the Long Beach hospital. It was the same kind of “devotion to duty” her own mother had practiced in preparing the elaborate funeral feast after Krikor Saatjian had died 1 1/2 years earlier at 92.

As much as anything else, Gloria Deukmejian is a private person. After her mother’s illness, Aunt Alice took over the role as chief confidante. “If there were things to complain about,” allowed Alice Saatjian in connection with the search for the gubernatorial home, “we used to talk. It didn’t go out from my house; it didn’t go out from her house.”

California’s First Lady is by all accounts an excellent cook. She likes to golf, needlepoint, garden. She reads Erma Bombeck, and watches “Hill Street Blues” and “60 Minutes.” She hates the soaps. She plays the piano, Mozart still her favorite. But Gloria Deukmejian plays only for herself. “When I was growing up and took piano for over 10 years, I had a recital every month and had to memorize so I played for enough people I think.”

Time with the governor’s wife is nearly up. She grows fruit, vegetables? “No flowers . . . just whatever you think.”

Toward the end she had been asked to define Gloria Deukmejian. “Being myself. My door is open for coffee to friends who want to stop by. Just because I’m First Lady doesn’t mean the door is locked. And just doing the things I’ve always done. Shopping. . . . It’s just life as usual; it’s just that my husband has a different job. . . . We’ve always kept a low profile.”

May we come by for coffee?

“Leave your pad behind,” she said.

Young adult comedies are best when the misery of high school is paired with other extreme types of terror — a plane crash, a supernatural mystery, vampires. “Wednesday,” Netflix’s Addams Family series, did just that and more when it premiered in 2022, combining sardonic wit, smart casting and murder in a beautifully macabre setting influenced by producer and director Tim Burton. Jenna Ortega stars as the Addams’ dark-hearted daughter. Her deadpan delivery and zombie prom dance solidified “Wednesday” as one of the year’s best and liveliest funerary comedies.

The second season of “Wednesday,” Part 1 of which debuts Wednesday followed by Part 2 on Sept. 3, finds the show’s namesake back at Nevermore Academy, where she’s faced with challenges familiar to last season. She must navigate the idiocy of her high school peers while solving a metaphysical murder mystery.

But there’s a new twist that threatens to undermine the unflappable protagonist, and it’s a teenager’s worst nightmare — even for a girl who enjoys night terrors. Wednesday’s weird family is headed to school with her. Brother Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez) is a Nevermore freshman and her parents Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and Gomez (Luis Guzmán) are helping with fundraising and such. Oh the horror.

Jenna Ortega’s Wednesday Addams “dance dance dances with her hands, hands, hands” in “Wednesday” Season 1.

(Netflix)

Season 2 follows many of the same formulas, replete with eviscerating comebacks from Daddy’s Little Viper. When her new high school principal, Barry Dort (Steve Buscemi), asks if she’d like a Nevermore Academy spirit sticker, she responds, “Only if you have one that says ‘Do Not Resuscitate.’” And when describing her underachieving brother’s shortcomings, she says, “He’s got the brains of a dung beetle and the ambitions of a French bureaucrat.”

But it’s impossible to recapture the magic of the first season, and “Wednesday” Season 2 isn’t quite as crisp or surprising. In the first four episodes made available for review, Wednesday’s zingers aren’t as wickedly sharp as they once were. And because we know she’s going to be annoyed by her classmates, such as perky werewolf roommate Enid (Emma Myers), the dynamic is not as morbidly charming.

The bond between Addams family members, however, is more deeply explored and their dysfunctional interactions add a new layer of contemptuous humor to the mix. The relationship between Wednesday and Morticia is strained, and not just due to the usual disgust teen daughters have toward their mothers. “When do I get to read your novel?” asks Morticia of her daughter’s work in progress, “Viper de la Muerte.” Wednesday’s inner voice answers, “When the sun explodes and the Earth is consumed in a molten apocalypse.” Her outside voice? “Soon, Mother. Soon.”

Morticia is worried about Wednesday’s increasing use of her psychic powers because similar abilities drove another family member mad. Her daughter is showing troubling signs such as black tears streaming from her eyes each time she has a psychic episode — though it’s a good look, especially for those contemplating their next Halloween costume.

We thankfully see a lot more of eccentric Uncle Fester (Fred Armisen owns this role) as he helps Wednesday solve her latest case, sometimes using the benefit of his telekinetic powers. Christina Ricci, who played Wednesday in the 1991 film, is also back. The deranged villain from Season 1 is now a deranged inmate.

Welcome new additions include Grandmama Hester Frump (played by Joanna Lumley of “Absolutely Fabulous”), Morticia’s immaculately coiffed mother and wealthy mogul who owns Frump Mortuaries. She’s cold, conniving and happy to cause a deeper rift between her granddaughter and daughter. And in a perfect casting move, Christopher Lloyd, who played Fester in the film, appears as a disembodied head in a jar who teaches at the academy.

Thing, the lone hand played by Romanian magician Victor Dorobantu, perhaps has the most screen time of anyone. Season 2 opens with the stitched-up appendage beating the hell out of a serial killer. It’s at once satisfying and stupidly hilarious.

As for the plot, it’s much the same as last season. There’s another mystery to solve, but this time it involves killer surveillance crows, a hooded stalker and at least a few visits to an insane asylum. There’s also a walking dead character added to the mix, so expect gore in the form of goo, brains and bugs.

But it’s really the performances, casting and artistic flourishes that make “Wednesday” a ghoulish delight. A short ghost story about a boy with a clockwork heart buried under the Skull Tree is told via Burton claymation, in black-and-white, in the spirit of “Frankenweenie.” It’s beautiful, sweet and sorrow-filled. “Wednesday” isn’t what it was and that’s OK. It still works as spooky comedy about a girl and her severed hand.

In the final weeks of philanthropist Wallis Annenberg’s life, her family and closest friends were consumed by a fierce power struggle over her medical care, court records show.

Three of her children — Gregory, Lauren and Charles — believed their mother was being mistreated during her most vulnerable time, wrongfully confined to her bed, isolated from family and longtime staff and overmedicated to the point of stupor.

They blamed their mother’s longtime partner, Kris Levine, and Kris’ older sister, Vikki Levine.

Vikki, who served as Annenberg’s personal assistant and held authority over her medical decisions, was exerting control over their mother in “likely fatal” ways, hastening her decline with excess narcotics, the children alleged in court documents. The children said they were shielded from information about their mother and were distressed that the Levine sisters had indicated plans to remove Annenberg’s body from her Century City villa within hours of her death and send her remains for composting before a proper goodbye.

“If there is anything suspicious about her death — which is appearing more and more likely given Vikki’s ongoing abuse of Wallis — it will render it impossible to conduct an autopsy,” the children’s legal team asserted in court filings.

The dispute drew in some of the city’s top lawyers, triggered calls to police and led the Annenberg children to march into Los Angeles County Superior Court in a frantic effort to dislodge Vikki Levine from overseeing their mother’s medical care.

Vikki and Kris Levine adamantly denied over-medicating or mistreating Annenberg, the heiress to her father’s publishing empire who, through her family’s foundation, gave about $1.5 billion to scores of organizations and nonprofits across Los Angeles County.

In court filings, Vikki Levine said the children’s “vicious and false accusations” stemmed from sadness that their mother didn’t disclose to them that her cancer had returned, that they weren’t in charge of her care, that her death was rapidly approaching and that she wanted to die “as gently as possible.”

“The Children have misdirected their pain, grief and anger at the wrong person, which is so much easier than confronting reality,” Vikki Levine said in a court filing in which she also accused the Annenberg children of creating a “toxic environment” when they visited.

Kris Levine, who started dating the heiress in 2009 and had lived with her since 2012, submitted a declaration stating that the Annenberg children had engaged in a campaign of “lies” to their mother, including telling her that her partner was trying to kill her. She insisted that the children had been permitted to visit but lamented that her home had become engulfed by acrimony.

“No one is attempting to hurt Wallis — we love her. No one is keeping her children from her. Despite the outrageous behavior they exhibit in my home at such a sensitive time, they are still welcome,” Kris Levine said in a declaration.

Annenberg had opted to go into hospice in the final weeks of her life, and Kris Levine questioned why the children would defy their mother’s wishes and disparage her choices, particularly in such a public way.

“Nobody controlled Wallis Annenberg and for anyone to say otherwise would contradict the truth and be disrespectful of her and her legacy as one of the most transformative philanthropists of our time,” said Stuart Liner, an attorney for Kris Levine, in a statement to The Times.

This account of the Annenberg family’s internal conflict is based on court records that provide a window into one of Southern California’s most prominent families. Wallis Annenberg’s estate lawyer, Andrew Katzenstein, and the children’s lawyer, Jessica Babrick, declined comment. Representatives for Vikki Levine did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Wallis Annenberg, center, sits between her son Charles Annenberg Weingarten and Kris Levine at a 2015 event.

(Chris Weeks / Getty Images)

Annenberg died Monday at age 86, drawing tributes from former President Biden, Gov. Gavin Newsom, and luminaries in the worlds of art, business and philanthropy.

The public mourning has highlighted Annenberg’s generosity toward elder care, animal welfare and USC, where she was a life trustee, among other causes. The turmoil among those closest to her, however, has persisted following the intense legal battle over her final days.

The dispute, at least so far, has not touched on the Annenberg family’s wealth — or what either side stood to financially gain or lose with the matriarch’s death. It originated, in part, in an advance healthcare directive that Annenberg allegedly signed on July 11, 2023, the year after she was diagnosed with lung cancer, according to court records.

The directive, which was notarized and executed with assistance from Annenberg’s attorney, Katzenstein, endowed Vikki Levine with primary authority over medical decisions and designated Annenberg’s son Gregory Weingarten as an alternate.

Annenberg’s children have since cast doubt on the document, asserting in a court filing that the signature appears to be right-handed, while Annenberg was left-handed.

Vikki Levine, with David Dreier, attends The Wallis Delivers: A Benefit Evening To Support Wildfire Recovery at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on April 30 in Beverly Hills.

(Rodin Eckenroth / Getty Images)

Why Annenberg installed Vikki Levine in the role is unclear. In court papers, she is described as Annenberg’s best friend, personal assistant and sister to “life partner” Kris Levine. Voting records show that all three women resided at Annenberg’s home. Vikki Levine had worked for the heiress since at least the mid-2000s, when Annenberg installed her as trustee over a granddaughter’s trusts, court records show.

Although Kris Levine was not listed among Annenberg’s survivors in several obituaries, she was a mainstay in her life, publicly accompanying her to events and co-chairing philanthropic events.

Last fall, after being in remission, Annenberg’s cancer returned. According to a court filing by Vikki Levine, the philanthropist decided not to tell her children or anyone but her “closest friends.”

“Wallis determined not to seek treatment, but to enjoy as much as possible, the time she had left,” according to the filing.

In April, after Vikki Levine told Annenberg’s children about their mother’s health, they “had nearly unlimited access to Wallis,” the filing said, asserting that the children’s claims rest on scores of in-person interactions with her, making it unlikely that she was forcibly isolated.

“Wallis has been visited virtually daily by her Children and/or grandchildren, and has 24 hour care by experienced medical staff,” Vikki Levine’s attorneys said.

Wallis Annenberg, seated, with her children Gregory Annenberg Weingarten, Lauren Bon and Charles Annenberg Weingarten.

(Hamish Robertson)

Around early May, Annenberg began hospice, with medication aimed to alleviate pain and anxiety from her decreased lung function, according to a declaration from one of her hospice nurses that was reviewed by The Times.

But the Annenberg children were growing increasingly alarmed, they said in court filings.

In June and early July, Vikki Levine had dismissed longtime household staff and was demanding that a new team overmedicate their mother, “administering excessive amounts of powerful narcotics and opioids, such as Fentanyl, Morphine, Ativan and other similar drugs,” the children alleged in a court filing.

The cocktail of narcotics kept their mother “in a vegetative state” and risked catastrophe, the children claimed, writing, “When Wallis is able to emerge from this near-comatose state, she is adamant that this is not what she wants and that she believes, in her own words, that Vikki is ‘kidnapping her.’”

To back their accusations, the children provided a judge with signed declarations from three of their mother’s caregivers, who said they had been ousted around late June after observing shocking scenes, including forgery of records and misrepresentations to Annenberg’s doctors.

“I witnessed Vikki forcing pills in Ms. Annenberg’s mouth when she clearly did not want to take them. I told Vikki that Ms. Annenberg seemed calm and did not need more medication,” said Annenberg’s housekeeper and caregiver of nearly 20 years. “Vikki told me the pills were for her upset stomach, but I told her that I knew they were Ativan because I saw the bottle.”

Another healthcare worker — a registered nurse of 40 years employed by a concierge medical service — said she was dismissed shortly after she objected to providing Ativan to Annenberg, who at the time was sleeping and did not appear anxious or agitated.

The nurse alleged that Vikki Levine forbade the staff from keeping a proper medication log and allowed Annenberg to drink alcohol, even while on medication.

“It is difficult for me to believe that this kind of conduct can happen to anyone, let alone Ms. Annenberg. No one deserves to be rushed to death,” the nurse said in her sworn declaration.

Lawyers for Vikki Levine said that all three former staffers supporting the Annenberg children had been fired “for cause,” but did not elaborate.

Before turning to the courts, the children asked Dr. Peter Phung, of Keck Medicine of USC, to visit their mother. Phung “determined that she was, indeed, being overmedicated” and trimmed her dosage, the children claimed in court filings.

“As a result, Wallis had her best day in weeks,” the children said. “Unfortunately,” they continued, Vikki Levine blocked access to the doctor, and she and her sister “completely barred” the children’s visits on July 13.

The following morning, the children petitioned a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge to suspend Vikki Levine’s authority as Annenberg’s healthcare agent and appoint one of her sons or a third-party professional instead. The children also asked the judge to impose a three-day period before Annenberg’s body could be transported out of L.A. or cremated.

In a 73-page filing, the children provided extraordinary details about their mother’s medical care, along with their concerns, situating their petition as an act of desperation.

“We have been informed that my mother may only have weeks to live, and I do not want those weeks to be spent in a medically-induced coma due to Vikki’s actions, which are contrary to medical advice and harmful to her well-being,” daughter Lauren Bon said in a declaration.

Annenberg’s daughter, artist Lauren Bon, stands in an L.A. River project site in 2023.

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Vikki Levine and her sister vehemently contested the allegations, denying any abuse and claiming that the children were misinformed or omitted key information.

“Dr. Phung did not determine that Wallis was being over-medicated as alleged,” said one of Vikki Levine’s filings. “To the contrary, Dr. Phung confirmed to Vikki that there has been ‘no mismanagement of symptoms.’”

Annenberg, they said, was confined to the bed because of doctor’s orders, not cruelty.

A hospice nurse who saw Annenberg nearly daily in the final weeks of her life also contested many of the claims of the children and the former caregivers.

The nurse, according to a signed declaration reviewed by The Times, said Annenberg’s care relied on direct orders from her physicians and was carried out by registered nurses from VITAS, a hospice service. The medical team kept all appropriate records, and Annenberg was confined to her bed because moving would have risked dangerous falls, respiratory distress and other calamities.

The Levine sisters portrayed the Annenberg children as improperly interfering in their mother’s affairs.

“They crowd around Wallis’ bed while the nurses are caring for her, tell Wallis that she doesn’t need the medication, refuse to get out of their way, ask numerous questions about the medication and procedures being employed, and generally make the situation untenable for a care-provider to work,” Kris Levine said in a declaration submitted to the judge.

While Kris Levine acknowledged that she had halted visits from the children on July 13, she said in a court declaration that she asked them not to come that day because of a series of heated confrontations, and that she had wanted to impose visiting hours to give Annenberg some rest and continuity.

“The children, particularly Gregory Weingarten, have aggressively refused my requests. Indeed, he has insisted that my name is ‘not on the deed,’ that I have ‘no rights’ to our home, and that he had ‘more rights’ to be there than I did,” Kris Levine said in her declaration.

The tensions boiled over with “multiple” calls to police by Annenberg’s children.

Vikki Levine said that when officers arrived on a recent Friday night, they “determined that there was no mistreatment of Wallis, no elder abuse as alleged, and told Vikki that she did not need to let the Children back into the house.”

Nevertheless, both Vikki and Kris Levine said they made it clear to the children that they could still visit their mother.

On July 22, Judge Gus T. May found that there was “good cause” to suspend Vikki Levine from serving as Annenberg’s healthcare agent.

In her place, the judge appointed Jodi Pais Montgomery, a professional fiduciary who has held roles in other celebrity cases in probate court, including Britney Spears and Carol Burnett’s grandson.

Montgomery was instructed to follow Annenberg’s advance healthcare directive and share confidential medical information with the Annenberg children, as well as with the Levine sisters.

Annenberg died less than a week later.

A Texas Lyme-disease researcher who came to the U.S. from South Korea at age 5 and is a longtime legal permanent resident was detained at San Francisco International Airport for a week, according to his lawyer.

Tae Heung “Will” Kim, 40, was returning from his brother’s wedding in South Korea on July 21 when he was pulled out of secondary screening for unknown reasons, said Eric Lee, an attorney who says he’s been unable to talk with his client.

Lee said that he has no idea where Kim is now and that Kim has not been allowed to communicate with anyone aside from a brief call last week to his family. A Senate office told him that Kim was being moved to an immigration facility in Texas, while a representative from the Korean Consulate told Kim’s family that he was going to be sent somewhere else.

“We have no idea where he is going to end up,” Lee said. “We have no idea why.”

Kim has misdemeanor marijuana possession charges from 2011 on his record, but his lawyer questioned whether that was the kind of offense that would merit being held in a windowless room underneath the terminals at the airport for a week.

Representatives from the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the L.A. Times. But a spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection told the Washington Post, which first reported the story, that “this alien is in ICE custody pending removal hearings.”

The spokesperson also said: “If a green card holder is convicted of a drug offense, violating their status, that person is issued a Notice to Appear and CBP coordinates detention space with [Immigration and Customs Enforcement].”

Kim’s attorney said if his client was detained because he “had a little weed when he was pulled over 15 years ago in his 20s,” that was absurd, adding: “If every American who had a tiny amount of weed in their car was detained under these conditions…”

Kim’s mother, Yehoon “Sharon” Lee, told the Washington Post that she was worried about her son’s health in custody.

“He’s had asthma ever since he was younger,” she told the Washington Post. “I don’t know if he has enough medication. He carries an inhaler, but I don’t know if it’s enough, because he’s been there a week.”

His mother told the paper that she and her husband entered the U.S. on business visas in the 1980s but by the time they became naturalized citizens, Kim was too old to get automatic citizenship.

Kim has a green card and has spent most of his life in the U.S. After helping out in his family’s doll-manufacturing business after the death of his father, he recently entered a doctoral program at Texas A&M and is helping to research a vaccine for Lyme disease.

There have been multiple reports nationwide of U.S. permanent residents being detained at airports, particularly those with criminal records, no matter how minor. These cases have prompted some experts to warn that green-card holders should avoid leaving the country, to reduce the risk of not being allowed back.

BALMEDIE, Scotland — Golf and Scotland are close to President Trump’s heart, and both were in play Tuesday as he opened a new eponymous course in the land of his mother’s birth, capping a five-day trip that was largely about promoting his family’s luxury properties.

Dressed for golf and sporting a white cap that said “USA,” Trump appeared to be in such a jolly mood that he even lavished rare praise — instead of the usual insults — on the contingent of journalists who had gathered to cover the event.

“Today they’re not fake news,” Trump said. “Today they’re wonderful news.”

The golf-focused trip gave him a chance to escape Washington’s summer heat, but he could not avoid questions about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the deepening food crisis in Gaza or other issues that trailed him across the Atlantic. The trip itself teed up another example of how the Republican president has used the White House to promote his brand.

Trump addresses Gaza and Epstein

Trump on Monday expressed concern over the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza and urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to do more to get food aid to hungry Palestinians.

Asked if he agreed with Netanyahu’s assertion Sunday that “there is no policy of starvation in Gaza and there is no starvation in Gaza,” Trump said he didn’t know but added, “I mean, based on television, I would say not particularly because those children look very hungry.”

The president also offered a reason why he banished Epstein from his private club in Palm Beach, Fla., years ago, saying it was because the disgraced financier “stole people that worked for me.” A top White House aide said last week that Epstein was kicked out for being a “creep.”

Trump tees off on newly opened golf course

Flanked by sons Eric and Donald Jr., Trump counted “1-2-3” and wielded a pair of golden scissors to cut a red ribbon marking the ceremonial opening of the new Trump course in the village of Balmedie on Scotland’s northern coast.

“This has been an unbelievable development,” Trump said before the ribbon cutting. He thanked Eric, who designed the course, saying his work on the project was “truly a labor of love for him.”

Eric Trump said the course was his father’s “passion project.”

Immediately afterward, Trump, Eric Trump and two professional golfers teed off on the first hole with plans to play a full 18 before the president returns to Washington on Tuesday night. Trump rarely allows the news media to watch his golf game, though video journalists and photographers often find him along the course whenever he plays.

Trump’s shot had a solid sound and soared straight, high and relatively far. Clearly pleased, he turned to the cameras and did an almost half-bow.

“He likes the course, ladies and gentlemen,” Eric Trump said.

Billed as the “Greatest 36 Holes in Golf,” the Trump International Golf Links, Scotland, is hosting back-to-back weekend tournaments before it begins offering rounds to the public on Aug. 13.

Trump fits White House business into golf trip

Trump worked some official business into the trip by holding talks with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and reaching a trade framework for tariffs between the U.S. and the European Union’s 27 member countries — though scores of key details remain to be settled.

But the trip itself was centered around golf, and the presidential visit served to raise the new course’s profile.

Trump’s assets are in a trust and his sons are running the family business while he’s in the White House. Any business generated at the course will ultimately enrich the president when he leaves office, though.

The new golf course will be the third owned by the Trump Organization in Scotland. Trump bought Turnberry in 2014 and owns another course near Aberdeen that opened in 2012.

Trump golfed at Turnberry on Saturday, as protesters took to the streets, and on Sunday before meeting there in the afternoon with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

New course blends things dear to Trump

The occasion blended two things dear to Trump: golf and Scotland.

His mother, the late Mary Anne MacLeod, was born on the Isle of Lewis on the north coast.

“We love Scotland here. My mother was born here, and she loved it,” Trump said Tuesday. She visited “religiously once a year” during the summer with his sisters, he said.

Perhaps the only mood-buster for Trump are the wind turbines that are part of a nearby wind farm and can be seen from around the new course.

Trump, who often speaks about his hatred of windmills, sued in 2013 to block construction of the wind farm but lost the case and was eventually ordered to pay legal costs for filing the lawsuit — a matter that still enrages him more than a decade later.

Trump said on a new episode of the New York Post’s “Pod Force One” podcast that the “ugly windmills” are a “shame” and are “really hurting” Scotland. The interview was conducted over the weekend and released Tuesday.

“It kills the birds, ruins the look. They’re noisy,” he said, asserting that the value of real estate around them also plummets. “I think it’s a very bad thing. Environmentally, it’s horrible.”

Weissert and Superville write for the Associated Press. Superville reported from Washington.

Israeli TV personalities are making fun of children dying of starvation in Gaza, with one even claiming a mother ate her baby. It is part of a right-wing media campaign that is promoting the famine as a hoax.

In “The Hunting Wives,” a brightly configured murder mystery cum cartoon sex opera premiering Monday on Netflix, Brittany Snow plays Sophie O’Neil, newly arrived from Boston with husband Graham (Evan Jonigkeit) and prop young son to fictional Maple Brook, Texas, a rich people’s town somewhere in the vicinity of Dallas. Graham is an architect, seemingly — at one point he will say, “Soph, you gotta check out this joinery,” which, in the three episodes out for review, is as specific as that will get — who has come to work for rich person Jed Banks (Dermot Mulroney) to build “the new Banks HQ.” What will happen in there is not said.

The O’Neils step into this world by way of a fundraiser at which Banks, who wants to be governor, is making a speech in support of the National Rifle Assn., highlighting the need for guns for “good people” to fend off “all sorts of evil sumbitches” and the “personas malos keep pouring in every day” across the border. This is as much of a platform as he will bother to have; plotwise, the point is that running for office may expose his swinging private life to public scrutiny.

Over the course of the party, we meet the major players: Jill (Katie Lowes) is married to Rev. Clint (Jason Davis), who runs the local megachurch; her son Brad (George Ferrier) — who would be named Brad — is an unpleasant slab of basketball-playing meat who is seeing, which is to say, trying to sleep with Abby (Madison Wolfe), a nice girl from the wrong side of the tracks. (Jill is against the relationship; Abby’s mother, Starr, played by Chrissy Metz, has her own reservations.) Callie (Jaime Ray Newman), second among the eponymous wives, is married to Sheriff Jonny (Branton Box); I’m not sure whether Jonny is his first or last name, but this does seem the kind of place where the sheriff would be known by his first. Supplementary wives Monae (Joyce Glenn) and Taylor (Alexandria DeBerry) are just there to make up the numbers.

Most important is Margo Banks (Malin Akerman), whom Sophie encounters in a bathroom where she has gone to take a Xanax for her social anxiety, and who, within seconds and not for the last time, is casually topless. Margo has no social anxiety.

She seizes on Sophie as fresh blood, or from some genuine connection, or because she recognizes in the newcomer the sort of person who needs a person like her, someone Margo can productively dominate to their mutual advantage. Margo immediately declares they’ll be besties — creating a rift with Callie, the current occupant of that role, who, radiating jealousy at every pore, is determined to get between them.

Sophie, Graham seems proud to announce, was once “a bit of a wild child … a party girl” who became a career woman — a political PR operative — and, for the last seven years, a full-time mother. He has a lightly controlling, “for your own good” manner, keeping her from drinking or driving — there’ll be a reason for that, you’ll have guessed — but before long, she will drink, and she will drive. “Two rules,” says Margo, getting her behind the wheel. “Trust me and do everything I say.”

Drafted into Margo’s world, Sophie is soon shooting skeet, and then, having bought her own guns, wild boar. I cite again the Chekhov dictum to the effect that a gun in the first act ought to go off in the second, but there are so many about here, and our attention so significantly drawn to them, it would be a shock if some didn’t fire — the only questions being which and when and whose, pointed at what or whom.

Developed by Rebecca Perry Cutter (“Hightown”) from May Cobb’s 2021 novel of the same name, the series offers a light dusting of political references — “deplorables,” Marjorie Taylor Greene, no abortion clinics “left to bomb,” negative mentions of feminism and liberals — that might as easily been left off in light of the insular fantasyland within which “The Hunting Wives” operates. (Did J.R. Ewing ever express a political opinion?) Given the context — liberal Northerners camped among conservative Southerners — one might have expected a “Stepford Wives” scenario, but this is something different. Within, or exploiting, their sociocultural limits (“We don’t work, we wife,” says Monae proudly), the women party heartily while the men, even when nominally powerful, come across as comparatively bland, uninteresting and distracted. Graham, who is very nice, can seem positively dim; “Take my wife, please,” he’ll happily joke when Margo rides up on a jet ski to spirit Sophie away from a family day at the lake.

The characters are types, but the actors fill them out well, and the dynamic between Margo and Sophie really is … dynamic. Margo is intriguing because she’s hard to figure. Like Sophie, she has a hidden past — when a mysterious figure at the local roadhouse (Jullian Dulce Vida) calls her Mandy, it makes her atypically nervous because, obviously, she was once called Mandy. She lies to her husband; she’s having sex with Brad, which just seems like bad taste. But there’s something authentic and genuine about Margo magnified by Akerman’s entrancing performance. Margo is a temptress, the devil on Sophie’s shoulder — but maybe the angel too.

Lest we forget, there’s a murder, which opens the show in a flash forward; the series catches up with it by the end of Episode 3. (It brings in Karen Rodriguez as Det. Salazar, which promises good things.) There’s also a briefly mentioned missing girl, which will certainly tie in somehow. But with only three episodes out of eight seen, it’s impossible to say where it’s all going — unless you’ve read the book, I suppose, but even then, you never know. What’s clear is that there’ll be more secrets to reveal, with skeletons tumbling out of every closet. And these are big houses, with plenty of storage.

An early line from “Salt Bones,” the latest novel from talented poet and novelist Jennifer Givhan, reads, “Daughters disappear here.”

It is a line that haunts the Salton Sea region, where Givhan has set her latest novel and infuses the toxic air upon which her characters must survive. In other words, this warning to keep your daughters close clings to everything. It is in the air, but also — in this thriller that employs elements of magical realism and mystery — it is in the water, buffeting each of these characters with the cadence of windblown waves crashing against the shore.

The Salton Sea is just as much a character here as Givhan’s main protagonists: Mal, a mother of two daughters, and the two daughters themselves — Amaranta, in high school, and Griselda, a science major in college. Through them, we get a sense of this place, what it was, what it is and what it is becoming. A sea that evaporates and pulls back year after year, exposing a lake bed contaminated with agricultural runoff and revealing not just the bones of fish but also a painful history that many would rather remains beneath the water’s surface.

“Salt Bones” by Jennifer Givhan

(Mulholland Books)

El Valle, the fictional town that serves as the primary setting for “Salt Bones,” is haunted by what surrounds it. By the memories of the missing. Daughters like Mal’s own sister, Elena, who disappeared more than 20 years before.

Now with two daughters of her own, Mal is a butcher at the local carnicería. But when one of the workers at the shop, Renata, a young woman the same age as Mal’s eldest daughter, doesn’t show up for work one day, Mal begins to spiral into the past, questioning what she could have done differently, and then what she could do now. And, most of all, why does all of this seem to keep happening here in El Valle?

For Mal and her family, there is no escape. They are followed not just by memories, but also by Mal’s mother’s spite-fueled dementia, which returns all of them again and again to the fissures in time just before and just after the disappearance of Mal’s sister. And now, with Renata gone missing, there is nowhere to hide from the tragedy of this place, not at work, not at home and not even at the edges of the Salton Sea where Mal can sometimes find a tenuous peace.

But it is not just Mal who roams these shores, but La Siguanaba, a shape-shifter often associated with Central American and Mexican folklore, wearing “whatever a man lusts after most. Sequins. Spandex. Fishnet. Nothing at all.” And then after enticing these men to approach, this being — often described as a woman — turns and reveals the “white-boned skull of a horse” beneath her long dark hair.

“By the time they scream,” Givhan writes, “it’s too late.”

La Siguanaba is a cautionary tale and a myth to some in El Valle. She is a ghost story to keep the kids safe and away from danger, but to Mal, she is very real. La Siguanaba comes to her in dreams; in her waking hours, she lurks just beyond the light. Her smell — something like urine and unmucked stables — floats on the wind, acting like a warning, a memory, a message.

But all this — the monster in the shadows, the missing daughters and even a rising tension in El Valle over a lithium plant and a looming ecological disaster — is only part of the story. Mal can only know so much, and it is through the details revealed by Mal’s daughters, Amaranta and Griselda, that we begin to comprehend the depth of this story.

Like all good mysteries, there is a whole world just out of reach: secret lives, secrets kept, secrets used like currency. For us — the readers — the clues are there. Givhan does a wonderful job infusing the early pages with hints and observations from each of the three perspectives, Mal, Amaranta and Griselda, all of whom are hiding things from each other.

To the reader, who benefits from the combined knowledge of these characters, each perspective adds a different lens. Mal, with her mother’s intuition and almost otherworldly connection to La Siguanaba, Amaranta, who is the youngest and still very much a child and who sees what others don’t expect her to, and then Griselda, home from college, who looks on all of this with a fresh, almost outside perspective. All of them come to the same conclusion very early on: Something is very off in this small community.

“Salt Bones” is a worthy read. It’s a book infused with the language and culture of a strong Mexican American and Indigenous community. In some way, like La Siguanaba, it’s a conduit into another world. A complicated, real and very much welcome, if a bit scary, world.

And though the layering of information — of what we know, what remains hidden from us and what has been foreshadowed — does add up (delaying what becomes a propulsive search for the missing in the second half of the novel), Givhan’s talents as a writer of blunt, strong sentences and remarkable poetic passages regarding the landscape and the sea more than make up for any delay.

“Salt Bones” is a triumph. One of the most masterful marriages of horror, mystery, thriller and literary writing that I’ve read in some time. And it is certainly a book that will haunt you (in a good way!) for a very long time after you’ve turned the final page.

Waite is the author of four novels and a book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Actor Kate Beckinsale is mourning the loss of her “dearest friend,” her mother British actor Judy Loe.

The “Underworld” star announced Thursday that her mother died Tuesday evening, writing in an emotional Instagram post that Loe died “in my arms after immeasurable suffering.”

Though Beckinsale in her post did not disclose a cause of death, she announced last year that her mother had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Loe was 78.

The “Pearl Harbor” actor, 51, said she felt compelled to announce her mother’s death because she had to register the “Space Island One” actor’s death certificate. She shared a carousel of photos and videos of her mother from over the years, including snaps of Loe in her youth and with granddaughter Lily Mo Sheen, whom Beckinsale shares with ex Michael Sheen.

“I am paralysed,” Beckinsale wrote in her caption. “Jude was the compass of my life, the love of my life, my dearest friend.”

Loe, born March 6, 1947, in Manchester, enjoyed a versatile career that began in the 1970s and earned her dozens of credits, mostly on British TV series. She broke out on the ITV fantasy series “Ace of Wands” in 1970s and went on to appear in numerous other programs for the network including “The Chief,” “Crown Court,” “Let There Be Love” and “Goodnight and God Bless.”

Throughout her career — her most recent credit was a minor role in the TV miniseries “Fool Me Once” in 2024 — Loe took on a variety of roles ranging from a magician’s assistant in “Ace of Wands” to a much sought-after divorcée in “Singles” to a spacecraft commander in “Space Island One.”

Prior to taking on screen roles, Loe pursued a career on the stage, including repertory theater in northern England’s Crewe, where in 1968 she met fellow actor Richard Beckinsale, whom she would marry in 1977. Though they split after two years of marriage, they welcomed daughter Kate in 1973. Richard Beckinsale died at age 31 from a heart attack.

Loe remarried in 1997 to television director Roy Battersby, who died in January 2024 after a brief illness. He was 87.

In her announcement, Kate Beckinsale praised her mother for her legacy, “huge heart” and courage in the final year of her life.

Beckinsale continued: “She has been brave in so many ways, forgiving sometimes too much, believing in the ultimate good in people and the world is so dim without her that it is nearly impossible to bear.”

Loe is survived by six stepchildren in addition to her daughter, according to the Guardian.

In a TikTok video captured by a fan at one of SiR’s sold-out L.A. shows last August, the Inglewood-born singer-songwriter breaks down into tears after his wife appears onstage behind him.

“Y’all give it up for my beautiful wife, Kelly Ann,” he says on the mic after collecting himself. When he leans to give her a kiss, the crowd erupts into a sea of “aws” and cheers.

It was a tender moment between the couple during the final stretch of his Life Is Good tour in support of “Heavy” — his most vulnerable project yet, which took five years to make and tackles his years-long battle with drug addiction, depression, infidelity and the process of getting sober. Behind the scenes, though, SiR was grappling with a different hardship: The death of his mother, Jackie Gouché, a talented performer who sang with Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder, and helped build SiR’s confidence as an artist.

His team was “ready for me to just drop everything and come home,” says SiR over Zoom. “But I prayed about it. I talked to my family, and we made the decision for me to finish the tour out, in honor of her.”

So by the time he got to the Hollywood Palladium, where he performed back-to-back shows, he says, “I think I was drained and I needed my support, and my wife just so happened to be there, which was just perfect for me. I’ll never forget that night.”

Since that emotional performance, SiR, born Sir Darryl Farris, released an extended version of “Heavy,” subtitled “The Light,” in April, which features six new tracks, some of which are new, such as “Sin Again” and “No Good,” and others that didn’t make the cut on the original project.

The Grammy-nominated singer, who is signed to L.A. powerhouse label Top Dawg Entertainment alongside R&B darling SZA, is set to make his headlining debut at the Hollywood Bowl on July 20 for the KCRW Festival. The upcoming show will feature an opening set from singer-songwriter Leon Thomas, of whom SiR is a “huge fan,” along with two surprise appearances from, he says, the “best guests I could get.”

Ahead of the upcoming show, we caught up with the “John Redcorn” singer to discuss how he’s keeping his late mother‘s memory alive through his music, how becoming a father of two daughters has affected him both personally and artistically and his goal to make a classic record that everyone knows.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

You recently wrapped up your Step Into the Light tour a few weeks ago. How was it being onstage with your older brother, Davion, who sang background vocals, and your uncle Andrew, who is a gospel bass legend?

It was so fulfilling. I’ve worked with them before on so many different levels. My uncle plays on all my songs, and Davion and I write songs together, but to have them on the road with me was just a different outer-body experience. I think my favorite part of all of that was the time we spent [together] before and after the shows, like having dinners with my uncle and finding out things about my parents that I didn’t know. Finding out stories about my grandfather that I’d never heard. Now, our bond is that much stronger. It’s really nice to have him on the road. My uncle Andrew is awesome. I got sick of my brother. [laughs]

You were also on tour last year in support of “Heavy,” which is your most vulnerable project yet. How was it performing these songs this time around as opposed to last year? Did any songs hit differently?

We changed the set list just a tad because we had new music that we wanted to promote. The newer songs felt great. I was really specific about which ones I added because I wanted them to be songs that I enjoyed singing. The songs that I have in the set list that are staples still hit the same, and the audience still responds the same way. But it was surprising to see people singing the new music. I was fully prepared to go there and have to explain myself through these songs, but people were already vibing and singing along, which was great. My audience is great. I love my fans so much.

What songs did you add from the “Heavy Deluxe: The Light” project?

We added “No Good,” “Sin Again,” “Out of My Hands” and then, of course, “Step Into the Light,” which we added to the end of the set. But we also have songs like “John Redcorn” in there, which is a staple. If I don’t sing “John Redcorn,” people will come for my neck.

Last August, a fan posted a video of you crying during one of your shows at the Hollywood Palladium after you saw your wife, and the comment section was filled with sweet and supportive messages. Do you mind sharing what headspace you were in that night and why you felt so emotional in that moment?

That was the end of the tour, so I knew I was done, and in the middle of that tour, I actually lost my mom. At the time, I was on the phone with [TDE Chief Executive Anthony “Top” Tiffith], and he asked me if I wanted to continue. They were ready for me to just drop everything and come home. But I prayed about it, I talked to my family, and we made the decision for me to finish the tour out, in honor of her. My energy was just so low. I’ve never felt like that and had to go perform, and we had like eight more shows left. So by the time I got to the Palladium, I was drained. There’s a song that I sing called “Tryin’ My Hardest,” and I wrote that when I wasn’t sober and I was just trying to work myself through recovery. It was an ode to my mother and my wife, just telling them that I wasn’t giving up every time I relapsed. I [think] it was that song that she came out to. Half the time, tears were flowing down my face. So I think I was drained and I needed my support, and my wife just so happened to be there, which was just perfect for me. I’ll never forget that night. We sold out the Palladium twice.

You had a really close relationship with your mother, Jackie Gouche, who was a phenomenal artist in her own right. Have you written any songs in dedication to her since her passing?

I have a song that goes: (Starts singing lyrics)

Her name is Danielle, born in December but never felt the cold
Chocolate skin and a heart that’s made of gold
A certain resemblance to someone that I know
As bitter, as sweet
As easy as it was to sweep me off my feet
I never imagined that you may never meet
I wish you could be here to watch my baby grow
She’s gonna to do well
Her name is Danielle.

It’s just a song about my daughter that I wrote for her, and hopefully, I put it on the next project. Ooh. But we’ll see. My mother was such a big reason why I started really writing songs and wanting to be SiR. I was a different kind of guy growing up. I was very timid. I wasn’t sure about my musical abilities or gifts, and anytime I sent her songs, she would just light up and tell me how beautiful it was and give me advice, which was very important. After a while, I just kept impressing her and kept blowing her away in her own words. She was a huge part of my confidence.

“I should be able to have an album out every year,” SiR said. “I’m a studio rat so we should be able to find it. But my sobriety had to be at the forefront of everything, and I’m navigating being SiR sober.”

(Rolexx)

You’ve been vocal and vulnerable about your experience of dealing with addiction and all of the lifestyle changes you’ve made since becoming sober. Can you talk about what you’ve learned about yourself throughout this time?

I’ve learned that I have an addictive personality, no matter what the drug is, and I’ve created some good habits. The gym is now the biggest addiction that I have. I definitely had to just learn who I was looking at in the mirror, because when you’re inebriated, intoxicated all the time, you don’t really know what’s going on or who you are, and it’s a tough place to be. It’s a tough hole to dig yourself out of, but once you get out of that, you’ve got to navigate not falling back into the hole. It took about a year before I even got close to being sober. I’d have, like, sober weeks, and relapse after relapse and things like that. But at this point, I’m proud of where I am as a father, as a husband, and I’m trying to make sure that I just keep nourishing my artistry, because as much as I’m glad that that album came out, it took me five years to put that album out, and that shouldn’t happen. I always like to think of myself as a hyper-creative, and I should be able to have an album out every year. I’m a studio rat, so we should be able to find it. But my sobriety had to be at the forefront of everything, and I’m navigating being SiR sober. This is all new, and it’s definitely fun, but I definitely had to really work to get here.

Since releasing “Heavy,” you had another daughter, whom you talked about earlier, so now you’re a father of two. Can you talk about how fatherhood has affected you personally and creatively?

Fatherhood is like, ooh man, it’s a process. It taught me a lot about myself. I’m selfish. I’m impatient. I’m getting old. [laughs] My body doesn’t move and respond the same. When you have a 3-year-old who’s running as fast as she can and you’re trying to keep up with her, it’s tough. But it also just taught me a lot about how well I was raised. My parents were sweet. They were so nice and so kind and so gentle with us, and very protective, but in the best ways. If I’m half as good of a parent to my kids as my mother was to me, I think they’re going to be fine.

On Sunday, you are going to headline the Hollywood Bowl for the first time. How are you feeling about the show and what are you most excited about?

I can’t lie, I was excited about Leon Thomas’ set, but I realize now that I’m not going to be able to watch it, because I’m going to be doing my vocal warmups and getting ready for own thing. So now I’m just excited to see that sea of people. In L.A., I’ve done some really good shows, but it’s a 17,000-cap venue, and I think we’re doing good on ticket sales. This is the largest SiR audience that I’ve ever seen, so I’m excited to see the fans and hear them sing along.

Have you met Leon Thomas before?

We haven’t met, but I’m a huge fan. I don’t know if a lot of people [know], but Leon Thomas was a songwriter before he started putting music out on his own. Of course, everyone knows him from his acting days, but he was a part of a writing group that is based in L.A. and has been writing songs for other artists, so to see him come to the forefront of his own artistry is a beautiful thing. I think I’m on the waiting list for a Leon Thomas session. Collaborating is big right now with me, especially since things have changed and I don’t work as much as I used to on my own. I want to bounce ideas off of good artists, and I want to have great musicians in the room so we can make sure that everything is where it’s supposed to be in the song. We talked about it. I texted him [last] week just to thank him for being a part of this, and I wanted to congratulate him on all of his success. He’s a good guy, and I’m definitely a huge fan.

Why is collaboration so important for you now? What’s changed?

I want better songs. I’ve been around a long time. I got a lot of music out, but I have this thing in my head where I just want a classic. I feel like I have some really good records, but I want a song that everybody knows. As a songwriter, I think the most beautiful music comes from collaboration because you have people there to give you guidance in your own thought process. Even if I’m leading the way, I have somebody in my ear that’s navigating into this place we’re trying to get to. But I definitely just want to write better songs, and I’m not afraid to ask for help. I’ve had to learn that the hard way. I spent a lot of time over the years just kind of closed off in my box, which was great because it created my world, my sound. But now that I have established my sound, I should always be open to people helping me create in my world, especially if they know what my world is.

Have you started thinking about your next project yet?

I am definitely thinking about my next project. It does not have a name. We don’t have a date, but I am as busy as I can be right now, just with new songwriting and trying to stay ahead of it, because if I make you guys wait another five years for another project, I don’t think I’ma survive. I might have to go get me a day job. So I’m definitely working, but I’m not gonna rush. I’m not gonna force anything. I’m not just gonna put out anything. We need, you know, at least 40 to 45 minutes of just greatness, and I’m gonna do everything I can to deliver for the fans, because they deserve it more than anything.

ATLANTA — The name was a surprise, but the pick should not have been.

The bromide about teams picking the best available player rather than drafting for need does not apply to the Angels, at least not in the Perry Minasian era. The Angels’ front office must try to win now, with an ownership that does not believe in rebuilding, and without huge investments in major league free agency, international scouting or player development.

The Angels needed pitching. They drafted a college pitcher Sunday, in line with their no-margin-for-error strategy of selecting top college players and pushing them into the major leagues.

Their pick: Tyler Bremner of UC Santa Barbara.

It’s been an emotional year for Bremner, who lost his mother to breast cancer in June.

On the day after she died, he saluted her in a long Instagram post that started this way: “Saying goodbye to you has been the hardest thing I have had to go through in my life. Why did this evil disease have to come into the life of such a pure hearted soul. Somehow through all this pain, darkness, and suffering there is light.”

The last four words: “rest easy my angel”

When his name was called Sunday, Bremner thought of his mother.

“I went to the Angels,” he said. “It’s weird how life works.”

The Angels invited him to Anaheim for a private workout last week. In a draft in which the hype around college pitchers focused on three left-handers from the Southeastern Conference, Bremner said his advisers told him about an hour before the draft started that the Angels might pick him.

And, after the Washington Nationals took high school shortstop Eli Willits — the son of former Angels outfielder Reggie Willits — with the No. 1 pick, the Angels were on the clock.

They had their pick of any pitcher in the country. They could have grabbed one of the SEC pitchers, or Corona High phenom Seth Hernandez. They went with the big right-hander from the Big West, with a fastball and a changeup that might already be ready for Anaheim.

The immediate expectation was that the Angels would cut a discount deal with Bremner, enabling him to collect a seven-figure bonus while enabling them to allocate more of their draft pool to swipe talented lower-round players away from college commitments. Bremner and Tim McIlvaine, the Angels’ scouting director, danced around that topic on Sunday.

But, if you’re the Angels, none of that scheming really matters if you don’t hit on the second overall pick of the draft.

McIlvaine said Bremner’s changeup gives him a go-to pitch, with a slider under development and a body that has yet to fill out.

“There’s a lot you can really dream on,” McIlvaine said.

The Angels need him to be right, and they need Bremner as a starter. A two-pitch pitcher would make a fine major league reliever, and don’t be surprised to see the Angels consider launching his major league career in that role later this season, if they stay afloat in the wild-card race. That could give them nine of their first-round picks on their active roster.

But you don’t use a first-round pick on a setup man. The Angels drafted two other pitchers among the top 10 overall picks within the past five years, and Reid Detmers and Sam Bachman now are setup men. Under Minasian, who was hired after the 2020 season, the Angels have drafted one pitcher that has delivered more than 1.0 WAR: Ben Joyce, a potential closer but now an injured setup man.

And the Angels’ second-round pick Sunday: an actual reliever, from the SEC. He is Chase Shores, who closed the College World Series clincher for Louisiana State and threw 47 pitches clocked at 100 mph or harder during the NCAA tournament.

As Bremner said, life works in weird ways.

“If you look at his second half of the year,” McIlvaine said, “I’d put it up against anybody in the country.”

In the second half of the season, his mother was dying.

“She came out to all the games,” he said, “all the way to the point where her body wouldn’t let her any more.”

In his last two games, weeks before she died, he gave up one run in 13-⅓ innings, walking two and striking out 23. That resilience was not lost on the Angels.

“I think, funny enough, as she got worse, that’s when I got stronger on the field,” Bremner said. “I feel I did a very good job of using that kind of negative energy and challenging it into pitching.

“Pitching angry, or pitching for her, or pitching for something bigger than myself, I feel like, in a way, it helped me on the field. But it’s not easy mentally to wrap my head around what’s going on off the field while trying to compete at a high level.”

That made Sunday a very different, and entirely memorable, mother’s day.

“I know she is watching over me,” he said, “and I know she is so proud of me.”

His mother, Jen, was born in Canada. The Canadians already are calling for him to represent her home country in the World Baseball Classic next spring, to honor her memory after losing her to cancer. Another pretty good ballplayer plays for Team Canada for the same reason, so you never know: Bremner could be teammates with Freddie Freeman next spring and Mike Trout next summer.