Kindle Edition Amazon Amiga Beach Town Books Category:  Historical Fiction Publisher: Black Rose Writing ISBN-10:  1684333881 Type: Fiction Pages: 239 Copyright: November 27, 2019 ISBN-13: 9781684333882 Price: $6.99 (eBook) To deal with her present, she must face a past she wants to forget. She may find the answers to her problems in the computer that changed her life, the Amiga.  In 1985, a young Laura Rodriguez goes to Silicon Valley to start a career as a computer programmer. She finds a job in San Rafael at a quirky startup run by a family with secrets. In 2016, a now middle-aged Laura faces growing professional and family crises and the most divisive presidential election in recent history. She fears losing her job in the wake of a merger, and she distrusts her new millennial boss. Her daughter has cancer, her son quit a lucrative programming job and moved back home, and her marriage is crumbling—especially when an old flame reenters her life. Laura must seek solutions from a past she wants to forget. She may find them in the computer that changed her life, the Amiga.

A Wondrous Tale of Female Empowerment in the Tech Age
Amiga by Matthew Arnold Stern is stirring and gripping novel about the experiences of the computer programmer Laura Rodriguez in the nascent 1980s and later in millennial charged 2016. The novel deftly alternates between these two periods. The 1980s scenes unfold an inspiring story of software and coding innovation – in this case what sounds like an early version of Photoshop – even as ominous secrets about the family-run start-up are revealed; the 2016 story line features Laura now working for a millennial boss, Tammy – a combination of cluelessness, crassness, and savvy.
In both storylines, Laura must summon her patience, intellect, and resourcefulness to navigate situations in constant flux. As Laura’s husband Kevin points out in the 2016 storyline, “Maybe the rules have changed, Laura. Everything has changed.” Indeed, in these parallel turbulent times, Laura’s nimbleness in dealing with being a woman in awkward positions (first as a young computer programmer and later an older figure in an industry currently embracing the shiny and new) becomes one of Amiga’s many pleasures. Another is how well Stern integrates the two stories as the Amiga computer that started it all returns to Laura’s life as does an old flame and a friend from the past.
Stern fills the novel with smart, sly remarks like this one describing the dowager Mrs. Posner: “I could see her giving lavishly to worthy causes, possibly to cover up some misdeeds in their past.” Laura’s time as a programmer of the Amiga in the Posner family household, under the guidance of the visionary techie Peter, serves as a powerful grounding for the novel and as a formative experience in our heroine’s development. Ultimately, what really elevates the novel is the satisfying, if disturbing, climax that resurrects the dark legacy and secrets of the Posner family.
As Laura explains, in the burgeoning 80’s tech world, “We were pioneers in a pristine, unexplored wilderness before we paved it over with an information superhighway. The Amiga made me feel like anything was possible …” That feeling of possibility is one of the novel’s great redemptive qualities and will make me consider the novel long after I return it to my shelf.

Fantastic!
Loved the book. Mathew Stern has obvious talent in formulating characters and keeping the reader's interest in turning the next page. I couldn't put it down!

Goodreads review
Honestly, I drunk ordered this book. I was browsing Twitter one day and this book came up. I can't remember how or why it did, but there it was. I ordered it and forgot about it. Several weeks later is showed up in my mailbox and I was excited to have something new to read, about the history of the Amiga! Well, that's not what this book is about, it's the story of a person and her life working on an Amiga, and being an amiga, the trials she faced in the 80s working on this revolutionary machine and the trials she's facing today, how your past can come back to haunt you and at the same time remind you that the past is what made you who you are today.

This book was not what I expected, but I enjoyed it more than I expected. The character development was solid and the timeline flipping was clear and easy to follow. I was left wanting to know what was going to happen to the protagonist chapter after chapter, and the ending of the book was good in that it was able to provide a sense of closure while still leaving me wanting more.