Jennifer Garner has signed on to the film The Tribes of Palos Verdes based on the 1998 Joy Nicholson young adult novel of the same title. Garner will play the mother role. She, her husband (a surgeon to the stars) and their two teenage children move from Michigan to the affluent beach community of Palos Verdes, California. Garner’s character is on the brink of a nervous breakdown but it’s really the story of the daughter, Medina (Maika Monroe). While Medina’s brother (Tye Sheridan) falls into a world of drugs, Medina is able to find some solace in surfing.
Francisca Goldsmith of the Berkeley Public Library wrote of Medina the protagonist: “She divides her peers into ‘tribes’, e.g., the towel girls (perfectly formed young women who never leave their beach towels), the “bottomfeeders” (lowlife guys who sell drugs on the beach and use strong-arm tactics to extract payment) but the microcosm of her own family occupies most of her emotional energy and readers’ attention.”
