At the end of the first chapter of her memoirGlitter Saints, creator of international clothing companyMagnolia Pearl, Robin Brown, is whisked up to the top of a Ferris Wheel by her carnival-circuit grandpa at the Strawberry Festival in Poteet, Texas. It was the eve of her and her parents moving to LA in the early 1960s.

It’s a fitting beginning for a story that quilts influences from the nation’s two largest states in a tale only their nature could nurture. Traipsing through the trappings of early 1960s California, Brown recounts her father safe-cracking on the Sunset Strip, her mother shimmying at the Pink Pussycat in Hollywood and the whole family having Thanksgiving with the Hell’s Angels in Sebastopol.