Dr. Julie Walker wakes on a summer morning in San Francisco to find a city in chaos. Today Californians are voting on a controversial ballot initiative that will change history. With the future of the state and the nation uncertain, the streets have erupted into violence.

Injured, Julie must make her way across the city by foot to the Veterans Administration Hospital, where her sister, recently returned from Afghanistan, is in labor. At the hospital a brutal scene is unfolding as a man who shares an intimate past with Julie begins to take his revenge. Throughout the ordeal Julie's estranged husband, desperate for reconciliation, sends out coded messages from the radio station where he is the well-known Voice of Midnight.

Five years in the making,Golden Stateis both a political thriller and a meditation on marriage, love, and loyalty. LikeThe Year of Fog, it is a page-turner with a philosophical bent.