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Mecca
From the National Book Award finalist Susan Straight, Mecca is a stunning epic tracing the intertwined lives of native Californians fighting for life and land
Johnny Frías has California in his blood. A descendant of the state’s Indigenous people and Mexican settlers, he has Southern California’s forgotten towns and canyons in his soul. He spends his days as a highway patrolman pulling over speeders, ignoring their racist insults, and pushing past the trauma of his rookie year, when he killed a man assaulting a young woman named Bunny, who ran from the scene, leaving Johnny without a witness. But like the Santa Ana winds that every year bring the risk of fire, Johnny’s moment of action twenty years ago sparked a slow-burning chain of connections that unites a vibrant, complex cast of characters in ways they never see coming.
In Mecca, the celebrated novelist Susan Straight crafts an unforgettable American epic, examining race, history, family, and destiny through the interlocking stories of a group of native Californians all gasping for air. With sensitivity, furor, and a cinematic scope that captures California in all its injustice, history, and glory, she tells a story of the American West through the eyes of the people who built it—and continue to sustain it. As the stakes get higher and the intertwined characters in Mecca slam against barrier after barrier, they find that when push comes to shove, it’s always better to push back.
Johnny Frías has California in his blood. A descendant of the state’s Indigenous people and Mexican settlers, he has Southern California’s forgotten towns and canyons in his soul. He spends his days as a highway patrolman pulling over speeders, ignoring their racist insults, and pushing past the trauma of his rookie year, when he killed a man assaulting a young woman named Bunny, who ran from the scene, leaving Johnny without a witness. But like the Santa Ana winds that every year bring the risk of fire, Johnny’s moment of action twenty years ago sparked a slow-burning chain of connections that unites a vibrant, complex cast of characters in ways they never see coming.
In Mecca, the celebrated novelist Susan Straight crafts an unforgettable American epic, examining race, history, family, and destiny through the interlocking stories of a group of native Californians all gasping for air. With sensitivity, furor, and a cinematic scope that captures California in all its injustice, history, and glory, she tells a story of the American West through the eyes of the people who built it—and continue to sustain it. As the stakes get higher and the intertwined characters in Mecca slam against barrier after barrier, they find that when push comes to shove, it’s always better to push back.
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First published March 15, 2022
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About the author
Susan Straight
45 books419 followersSusan Straight's newest novel is "Between Heaven and Here." It is the last in the Rio Seco Trilogy, which began with "A Million Nightingales" and "Take One Candle Light a Room." She has published eight novels, a novel for young readers and a children's book. She has also written essays and articles for numerous national publications, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Nation and Harper's Magazine, and is a frequent contributor to NPR and Salon.com.
Her story "Mines," first published in Zoetrope All Story, was included in Best American Short Stories 2003. She won a Lannan Literary Award in 2007. She won a 2008 Edgar Allan Poe Award for her short story "The Golden Gopher."
She is a Professor at the University of California, Riverside and lives in Riverside, California.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 491 reviews
June 21, 2025
Thinking of this brilliant book three years after I read it. How must it feel to be in law enforcement... and having to suspend your conscience when ordered to act against your community.
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Susan Straight paints a brilliant and stunning portrait of a whole segment of people often invisible to the world-- at least unrecognized by most. "Mecca" drew me back to my Southern California roots right from the start with the warm Santa Ana winds bathing the landscape. The Santa Anas also summon the fire season and expose the first threat of the book. Highway Patrolman Johnny Frias spots the start of a possibly deadly brushfire threatening his family in the parched canyons off the freeway. He is an Hispanic officer who has had to toe the line between life in law enforcement and answering to his community-- struggles reminiscent of Tony Hillerman's Navajo Officer Jim Chee. Although Johnny and his buddies all applied to be cops, he was the only one to make it. Now, instead of being looked up to and respected, he is ostracized as a part of an establishment crushing his people. On top of that he is living in the shadow of a crime he was forced to commit.
As the chapters follow, we are treated to more three-dimensional characters, not cardboard cutout stereotypes. These are people living in the same land as white people but in a different world. There are so many threats out there. There is the plague of Covid-19. There is ICE. There is the harassment of being suspect in the wrong area with the wrong complexion or surname. Everyone has to look over their shoulders from time to time... the lives we meet here are governed by a very real paranoia. One tragedy was depicted in such a raw, honest way that it moved me unexpectedly to tears. An event played out over and over in the news gets personalized when the victims are not just video footage.
Susan Straight reminds us that there is another reality out there for some, a truth reinforced by attitudes developed over centuries. In this day and age it is no shock to any intelligent person that biases and prejudices exist. "Mecca" is an eye-opening glimpse at what is often not really seen. 5 out of 5 stars for what looks to be one of the best books of the year.
***Now a finalist for the Kirkus Prize for Fiction.
Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for providing the ARC in exchange for an honest review. #Mecca #NetGalley
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Susan Straight paints a brilliant and stunning portrait of a whole segment of people often invisible to the world-- at least unrecognized by most. "Mecca" drew me back to my Southern California roots right from the start with the warm Santa Ana winds bathing the landscape. The Santa Anas also summon the fire season and expose the first threat of the book. Highway Patrolman Johnny Frias spots the start of a possibly deadly brushfire threatening his family in the parched canyons off the freeway. He is an Hispanic officer who has had to toe the line between life in law enforcement and answering to his community-- struggles reminiscent of Tony Hillerman's Navajo Officer Jim Chee. Although Johnny and his buddies all applied to be cops, he was the only one to make it. Now, instead of being looked up to and respected, he is ostracized as a part of an establishment crushing his people. On top of that he is living in the shadow of a crime he was forced to commit.
As the chapters follow, we are treated to more three-dimensional characters, not cardboard cutout stereotypes. These are people living in the same land as white people but in a different world. There are so many threats out there. There is the plague of Covid-19. There is ICE. There is the harassment of being suspect in the wrong area with the wrong complexion or surname. Everyone has to look over their shoulders from time to time... the lives we meet here are governed by a very real paranoia. One tragedy was depicted in such a raw, honest way that it moved me unexpectedly to tears. An event played out over and over in the news gets personalized when the victims are not just video footage.
Susan Straight reminds us that there is another reality out there for some, a truth reinforced by attitudes developed over centuries. In this day and age it is no shock to any intelligent person that biases and prejudices exist. "Mecca" is an eye-opening glimpse at what is often not really seen. 5 out of 5 stars for what looks to be one of the best books of the year.
***Now a finalist for the Kirkus Prize for Fiction.
Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for providing the ARC in exchange for an honest review. #Mecca #NetGalley
January 31, 2022
“The wind started up at three a.m., the same way it had for hundreds of years, the same way I used to hear it blowing so hard around our little house in the canyon that loose windowsills sounded like harmonicas. The old weather stripping played like the gods pressed their mouths around the screens in the living room, where I slept when I was growing up.”
A beautifully written opening to a book that took me deep into places in Southern California that I have never been, deep into lives of people I have not known and into the world that exists with prejudice and racism towards those who were not born here and those who were. The feel of it is more like a collection of stories with the characters connected in various ways, rather than a cohesive novel. Characters connected as family, by friendships, connected in the past and sometimes in the present.
I didn’t find much happiness here. There’s loss of loved ones and a depiction of the fear of some facing deportation if caught by ICE, the day to day worry of what you might face today even if you were born in the U.S. and you work for the California Highway Patrol, and there was the coronavirus. But I did find friendship, love and a view of a world I don’t personally know.
I received an advanced copy of this book from Farrar, Straus and Giroux through Edelweiss.
January 18, 2022
3.5 stars, rounded up
I will admit to being drawn to Mecca because of reviews by authors I enjoy. Attica Locke. Michael Connelly. The book tells the story of Johnny Frias, whose heritage involves generations of Californians. But because he’s Hispanic, he’s treated like he’s just arrived. Straight covers the casual prejudice, the racism. “Okies and Mexicans. They never get it out of their minds. California thinks they’re the most liberal and they fuckin love everybody. But they’ll ask you where you were born just like people do in a small town in Texas. Same old shit.”
Johnny’s not a youngster. He’s been CHP for 20 years. As a rookie, he killed a man up in the Bee Canyon. The one witness, the woman being attacked by the man, disappeared. And Johnny’s been worried he’d be found out ever since.
There are multiple storylines, told from different POVs. They are interconnected revolving around Johnny as the center. Many of the stories involve family - the sacrifices, the loss of a child, but also those that fail at the job. In some ways, this reads more like a series of short stories, a la Elizabeth Strout’s or Tommy Orange’s style.
I haven’t read any of Susan Straight’s books before this. She’s a master at putting you smack dab in the time and place. The Santa Ana winds. The brush fires. The carry out window of a fried chicken joint. ICE demanding ID.
One issue I had is that Straight uses a lot of Spanish words and phrases that are often not easily apparent to those who don’t speak the language.
This is a beautifully written book but a little too disjointed for my taste. And the ending leaves a lot of things up in the air. If you want resolution, this isn’t the book for you.
My thanks to Netgalley and Farrah, Strauss and Giroux for an advance copy of this book.
I will admit to being drawn to Mecca because of reviews by authors I enjoy. Attica Locke. Michael Connelly. The book tells the story of Johnny Frias, whose heritage involves generations of Californians. But because he’s Hispanic, he’s treated like he’s just arrived. Straight covers the casual prejudice, the racism. “Okies and Mexicans. They never get it out of their minds. California thinks they’re the most liberal and they fuckin love everybody. But they’ll ask you where you were born just like people do in a small town in Texas. Same old shit.”
Johnny’s not a youngster. He’s been CHP for 20 years. As a rookie, he killed a man up in the Bee Canyon. The one witness, the woman being attacked by the man, disappeared. And Johnny’s been worried he’d be found out ever since.
There are multiple storylines, told from different POVs. They are interconnected revolving around Johnny as the center. Many of the stories involve family - the sacrifices, the loss of a child, but also those that fail at the job. In some ways, this reads more like a series of short stories, a la Elizabeth Strout’s or Tommy Orange’s style.
I haven’t read any of Susan Straight’s books before this. She’s a master at putting you smack dab in the time and place. The Santa Ana winds. The brush fires. The carry out window of a fried chicken joint. ICE demanding ID.
One issue I had is that Straight uses a lot of Spanish words and phrases that are often not easily apparent to those who don’t speak the language.
This is a beautifully written book but a little too disjointed for my taste. And the ending leaves a lot of things up in the air. If you want resolution, this isn’t the book for you.
My thanks to Netgalley and Farrah, Strauss and Giroux for an advance copy of this book.
March 4, 2022
This novel in interrelated stories traces the interwoven lives of working people in the 'other' Southern California--not beaches and premieres, but the one where windy Orange County canyons take us a step back in time, where a Latinx highway patrol cop returns to check on his father and the other elderly vaqueros in a hidden rancho during fire season, opening up an entire invisible world, unknown to most recent arrivals to Orange County anglo uniformity. From the cop and the vaqueros, w'ere introduced in various invisible lives--a Oaxaca woman working at a desert med-spa, living with extended family on a 'rancho' on indigenous land, and into a group of tighknit friends, their long-rooted friendships crossing every ethnicity and going back a generation, and forward to their own children.
A major theme of these stories, bedrock to much of the work of Susan Straight over time, is the story of those who stay. Her work opposes the American literary myth of the heroic individual who inevitably leaves his community behind in order to achieve his or her destiny--giving birth to a literature of the alienated solitary, searching for acceptance in a new city, upwardly mobile, trying to find him or herself in alien territory. But novelist Straight is more interested in the people who remained in their communities, or who migrate together, people entwined in long friendships and extended family, the means by which poor people survive--by helping each other, by establishing roots, by caring and interdependence. She chronicles the lives of people who live not in Malibu but in hardscrabble Southern California locales like San Bernardino, Fontana, Indio, and the invisible work in hospitals and hotels, the fields and highways. The heartbreaks of the book, of which there are many, are counterbalanced by the depth of the love, loyalty and commitment of these networks of interwoven lives.
A major theme of these stories, bedrock to much of the work of Susan Straight over time, is the story of those who stay. Her work opposes the American literary myth of the heroic individual who inevitably leaves his community behind in order to achieve his or her destiny--giving birth to a literature of the alienated solitary, searching for acceptance in a new city, upwardly mobile, trying to find him or herself in alien territory. But novelist Straight is more interested in the people who remained in their communities, or who migrate together, people entwined in long friendships and extended family, the means by which poor people survive--by helping each other, by establishing roots, by caring and interdependence. She chronicles the lives of people who live not in Malibu but in hardscrabble Southern California locales like San Bernardino, Fontana, Indio, and the invisible work in hospitals and hotels, the fields and highways. The heartbreaks of the book, of which there are many, are counterbalanced by the depth of the love, loyalty and commitment of these networks of interwoven lives.
March 15, 2022
’The wind started up at three a.m., the same way it had for hundreds of years, the same way I used to hear the blowing so hard around our little house in the canyon that the loose windowsills sounded like harmonicas. The old metal weather stripping played like the gods pressed their mouths around the screens in the living room, where I slept when I was growing up.’
This is how this story begins, with these words.
Most people associate California with sunshine, beaches, surfing, San Francisco, the Golden Gate Bridge, Disneyland and Hollywood, Movie Stars. Vacation time, the warmth of the sun, a margarita by the pool. But for the people who live there, it has its downsides, as well, perhaps more so the closer to the southern border you are. If the fires and earthquakes aren’t enough, this story shares the lives of those who are continuously subjected to judgment and/or harassment because of how they appear to others, the colour of their skin or their accent, or how well they understand or speak the English language. As if the original people of this land were white skinned and spoke english.
’I never knew my own grandparents, but my friend Grief Embers told me his grandmother used to say if you lived where you were born, and you got to be fifty, you saw every few miles the place where a soul you’d known left this world.’
This shares the stories of multiple people living among the Latinx community, including a motorcycle cop who has to endure the seemingly neverending stupid comments made by those he pulls over for one legitimate reason or another. When he tells a man he’s just caught raping a young girl that he’s law enforcement, that he needs him to walk away from the girl and put his hands on a rock, the “man” responds with ’I need you to turn around and head back to Mexico.’ A cop who will forever after have a secret he can never share.
’But my dad’s words were always in my head—Johnny, there’s bones buried in every canyon in California. Algo muerto. Vacas, linces, perros. Coyotes, conejos, chavalos.’ ‘Something dead. Cows, lynxes, dogs. Coyotes, rabbits, kids.’
The stories of others are shared, as well. Merry Jordan, a neonatal nurse, her son Tenefire, shot by police, now brain dead beside her because they thought he had a gun. An abandoned baby found by an undocumented maid in a hotel room. A woman who lives in an exclusive neighborhood, Los Feliz. And a woman whose husband has left her and their children for a younger woman. Lives turned upside down, lives lived in fear.
While often heartbreaking, there is also beauty in the way this is shared, along with a realistic portrayal of loss, grief, racism, as well as the impact of COVID on all during these last few years.
Published: 15 Mar 2022
Many thanks for the ARC provided by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
April 13, 2022
Thanks to the publisher - RB Media for providing ARC in exchange for an honest review via NetGalley.
1/5 stars
The story has multiple storylines. There are different POVs to it. All, in the end, are interconnected to revolve around Johnny, being the center of the plotline.
All of this is fine by me. What's not fine is that it didn't pay off well in the end. In fact, nothing worked out for me in the end. It was all so disjointed and clumsy for me to be ok with. I felt disjointed With the story on a broader picture, if that makes sense. I'm happy to have finished with this book so that I can get into a story I'm more invested in.
Release Date: 15 Mar 2022.
Review Posted: 07 Apr 2022.
Visit My Blog to read this and all my other reviews.
1/5 stars
The story has multiple storylines. There are different POVs to it. All, in the end, are interconnected to revolve around Johnny, being the center of the plotline.
All of this is fine by me. What's not fine is that it didn't pay off well in the end. In fact, nothing worked out for me in the end. It was all so disjointed and clumsy for me to be ok with. I felt disjointed With the story on a broader picture, if that makes sense. I'm happy to have finished with this book so that I can get into a story I'm more invested in.
Release Date: 15 Mar 2022.
Review Posted: 07 Apr 2022.
Visit My Blog to read this and all my other reviews.
April 8, 2022
Audiobook….narrated by Frankie Corzo, Patricia R. Floyd, Shaun Taylor-Corbelt
…..12 hours and 46 minutes
Johnny…..
Oh, Johnny Frias….. I won’t forget you - the HELL YOU WERE UP AGAINST….. I am sooooo sorry!!!
Thank you for your work and dedication against the burning hell of UGLINESS!!!
Johnny……….
YOU ARE MY HERO!!! ……
…..and to all the other men and women—the unforgotten heroes…..BLESS YOU!!!
…it must be said…
The storytelling of ‘Mecca’ > a panoramic slice of social realism that incorporates Susan Straight’s themes (race, family, history, the working poor, Mexican people who looked like they were not Americans and prejudice they faced, horrors of injustice, loss, grief, the impact of Covid, and so much oppression), through her stunningly compelling - interconnected stories — interweaving lives of native Californians “FIGHTING” for their “LIFE” and “LAND” …..[not a better way to express it]….
is BRILLIANT….BRUTAL….UNFORGETTABLE….
and HEARTBREAKING!!!
THE AUDIOBOOK —is outstanding!!!!
*Susan Straight*…..
> you’re my new heroine. (I’ve fallen hard)…..and when I fall hard…I’m loyal to the bone!
I’m sooo moved by your higher principal of justice…..and standing for what matters….
> your book - of purpose - is a huge reminder for me to appreciate all the strangers I pass when out walking….appreciate all people/ strangers ….in every nook’n cranny …..in every store….on every street.
> your writing is exquisite, and the characters so fully developed they nearly pop off the page. The honesty portrayal of the characters’ feelings, actions and traits-good and bad-….
and their devastating frustration…was deeply felt by me.
In the land of American opportunity…..’Mecca’ [Southern California Dreamin]…..Susan Straight highlights the unseen lives ….the real heroes who built our country with the odds stacked against them…… the farmers, the ranchers, the diverse communities with their responsibilities to their families and heritages.
I gotta say…..at one point I got an urge to have friends come over for homemade tortillas making …[I’ve no working full kitchen these days]….
but Mecca inspired me to have friends over for the best Mexican food - that we make ourselves - feast with friends - when our new kitchen is complete.
Years ago when our kids were little …. we had a homemade tortilla gathering here….with yummy beans, rice, and guacamole.
I couldn’t help but remember our tortilla making day party…..
Oh…the memories ‘do’ pop up in our reading….doesn’t it?
[our party was actually inspired by one of their school teachers who was teaching California Native American history]
Fun facts about the tortillas:
…..Among the native Mexicans, tortillas were commonly used as eating utensils. In the Old West ‘cowpokes’ realized the versatility of tortillas and used tortillas filled with meat or other foods as a convenient way to eat around the campfire.
…… The name tortilla comes from Spanish and means ‘small cake’. The oldest found tortillas date back as far as 10,000 years BC and we’re made of maize with dried kernel
It was the principal food of the Aztecs who lived in Mesoamerica.
This book took my heart — of course it was difficult & heartbreaking…..
As Johnny’s dad told him….”There’s bones buried in every canyon in California” ……
….but the beauty and cultural history…shines a light worthy of looking at.
Highly recommend!!!
…..12 hours and 46 minutes
Johnny…..
Oh, Johnny Frias….. I won’t forget you - the HELL YOU WERE UP AGAINST….. I am sooooo sorry!!!
Thank you for your work and dedication against the burning hell of UGLINESS!!!
Johnny……….
YOU ARE MY HERO!!! ……
…..and to all the other men and women—the unforgotten heroes…..BLESS YOU!!!
…it must be said…
The storytelling of ‘Mecca’ > a panoramic slice of social realism that incorporates Susan Straight’s themes (race, family, history, the working poor, Mexican people who looked like they were not Americans and prejudice they faced, horrors of injustice, loss, grief, the impact of Covid, and so much oppression), through her stunningly compelling - interconnected stories — interweaving lives of native Californians “FIGHTING” for their “LIFE” and “LAND” …..[not a better way to express it]….
is BRILLIANT….BRUTAL….UNFORGETTABLE….
and HEARTBREAKING!!!
THE AUDIOBOOK —is outstanding!!!!
*Susan Straight*…..
> you’re my new heroine. (I’ve fallen hard)…..and when I fall hard…I’m loyal to the bone!
I’m sooo moved by your higher principal of justice…..and standing for what matters….
> your book - of purpose - is a huge reminder for me to appreciate all the strangers I pass when out walking….appreciate all people/ strangers ….in every nook’n cranny …..in every store….on every street.
> your writing is exquisite, and the characters so fully developed they nearly pop off the page. The honesty portrayal of the characters’ feelings, actions and traits-good and bad-….
and their devastating frustration…was deeply felt by me.
In the land of American opportunity…..’Mecca’ [Southern California Dreamin]…..Susan Straight highlights the unseen lives ….the real heroes who built our country with the odds stacked against them…… the farmers, the ranchers, the diverse communities with their responsibilities to their families and heritages.
I gotta say…..at one point I got an urge to have friends come over for homemade tortillas making …[I’ve no working full kitchen these days]….
but Mecca inspired me to have friends over for the best Mexican food - that we make ourselves - feast with friends - when our new kitchen is complete.
Years ago when our kids were little …. we had a homemade tortilla gathering here….with yummy beans, rice, and guacamole.
I couldn’t help but remember our tortilla making day party…..
Oh…the memories ‘do’ pop up in our reading….doesn’t it?
[our party was actually inspired by one of their school teachers who was teaching California Native American history]
Fun facts about the tortillas:
…..Among the native Mexicans, tortillas were commonly used as eating utensils. In the Old West ‘cowpokes’ realized the versatility of tortillas and used tortillas filled with meat or other foods as a convenient way to eat around the campfire.
…… The name tortilla comes from Spanish and means ‘small cake’. The oldest found tortillas date back as far as 10,000 years BC and we’re made of maize with dried kernel
It was the principal food of the Aztecs who lived in Mesoamerica.
This book took my heart — of course it was difficult & heartbreaking…..
As Johnny’s dad told him….”There’s bones buried in every canyon in California” ……
….but the beauty and cultural history…shines a light worthy of looking at.
Highly recommend!!!
March 15, 2022
The wind blows hard and hot through the Santa Ana Canyon in Susan Straight’s new novel, “Mecca.” By highway, this is a realm not far from the glitter of Hollywood and the animatronic joy of Disneyland, but by any measure that matters, it’s light-years away.
Straight’s characters are the backbones of agriculture, health care and hospitality — those people of color who pick, wipe and disinfect for long hours on low wages. Through the tinted windows of a speeding Mercedes, their communities may look as plain as the desert, but under Straight’s capacious vision, they appear in all their vibrant humanity.
“Mecca” is, among many things, a shrewd deconstruction of racial categories and the racist assumptions built upon them. Straight tackles not only the way prejudice motivates violence but the way it distorts the response to violence. In this country, crimes are framed by certain assumptions about culpability and innocence based on skin color, and that corrosive system determines who can report a crime, how it’s investigated and what the punishment — if any — will be.
What’s more, Straight introduces us to men and women whose families have been on this land for centuries, far longer than the White folks who regard them suspiciously as “illegal aliens.” They’re descended from. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...
Straight’s characters are the backbones of agriculture, health care and hospitality — those people of color who pick, wipe and disinfect for long hours on low wages. Through the tinted windows of a speeding Mercedes, their communities may look as plain as the desert, but under Straight’s capacious vision, they appear in all their vibrant humanity.
“Mecca” is, among many things, a shrewd deconstruction of racial categories and the racist assumptions built upon them. Straight tackles not only the way prejudice motivates violence but the way it distorts the response to violence. In this country, crimes are framed by certain assumptions about culpability and innocence based on skin color, and that corrosive system determines who can report a crime, how it’s investigated and what the punishment — if any — will be.
What’s more, Straight introduces us to men and women whose families have been on this land for centuries, far longer than the White folks who regard them suspiciously as “illegal aliens.” They’re descended from. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...
May 29, 2022
California
Oh California I'm coming home
Oh make me feel good rock 'n' roll band
I'm your biggest fan
California I'm coming home
The California Joni Mitchell sang of fifty-one years ago (gulp) is the beachy, breezy, sister golden hair Eden of our sweetest dreams. If it was ever thus, those dreams ended long ago. And even in California's halcyon days, the Inland Empire — the long, arid of south-central stretch from the San Bernardino mountains to the Mexican border — never had the glam of soft-focus Hollywood or the savoir vivre of tie-dyed and gone to heaven San Francisco. It is a hard land of deserts and mountain peaks, of dangerous borders and famous roads (Rte 66), a place of transition, a pass-through to something better. And the setting of Susan Straight's complicated and impactful Mecca.
The novel is a series of interwoven narratives featuring a cast of characters who cross paths throughout its twenty year span. Some have ties in California that go back to the dawn of human existence. Some are descendants of African slaves with traces of European forebears. Others are recent migrants from Central America fleeing poverty or gangs and hanging all their hopes on this northern Mecca (Mecca is also an unincorporated town in the Inland Empire, aptly if not over-optimistically named). What they have in common are the complexities of their ethnicities, which are so often reduced to the colors of their skin and the biases and assumptions made thereof, the depths of their desires, and the richness of their lives.
We meet Johnny Frias, a CHP officer who descends from Mexican immigrants and Indigenous Californians. Ximena, who survived a harrowing journey from Oaxaca to work, undocumented, as a maid. Matelasse Rodrigue, a Black woman of California and Cajun heritage who is raising her two young sons after their father left to become a capoeira master and internet sensation, pretending to be Brazilian and not a local boy from the Coachella Valley. There are a dozen more characters, and one of the singular astonishments of this novel is how Susan Straight brings them all to vivid life; even the most minor has depth and color that make their presence critical to the story as a whole. But these three form the central cast that carry the story through twenty years of family, friends, and a changing landscape.
The landscape itself is a character and even at its most villainous— in flame, in searing, unforgiving heat, in drought and dark — Straight writes with awe and love for the difficult, cruel beauty of these valleys and mountains. I learned aspects of California I'd never known as Straight considers the indigenous, pioneer and migrant heritage of its farmsteads, citrus groves, the growth of its towns and cities.
Mecca is beautifully and skillfully written, the author able to inhabit this multiplicity of voices and perspectives with authority and ease. I celebrate that a writer has the perception, sensitivity and certainty to write outside her own racial, ethnic, linguistic and gender experience. The story does suffer somewhat from its own immediacy, getting bogged down in multiple ripped-from-the-headlines catastrophes, including the pandemic. There is a twist near the end that serves to bring us back to the story's beginning, but it's so weird and fantastical that I kept looking around, metaphorically, to see if I'd missed something. It jarred me out of the rest of this transformative novel.
This is the first Susan Straight novel I've read, and I look forward to delving into her backlist.
Oh California I'm coming home
Oh make me feel good rock 'n' roll band
I'm your biggest fan
California I'm coming home
The California Joni Mitchell sang of fifty-one years ago (gulp) is the beachy, breezy, sister golden hair Eden of our sweetest dreams. If it was ever thus, those dreams ended long ago. And even in California's halcyon days, the Inland Empire — the long, arid of south-central stretch from the San Bernardino mountains to the Mexican border — never had the glam of soft-focus Hollywood or the savoir vivre of tie-dyed and gone to heaven San Francisco. It is a hard land of deserts and mountain peaks, of dangerous borders and famous roads (Rte 66), a place of transition, a pass-through to something better. And the setting of Susan Straight's complicated and impactful Mecca.
The novel is a series of interwoven narratives featuring a cast of characters who cross paths throughout its twenty year span. Some have ties in California that go back to the dawn of human existence. Some are descendants of African slaves with traces of European forebears. Others are recent migrants from Central America fleeing poverty or gangs and hanging all their hopes on this northern Mecca (Mecca is also an unincorporated town in the Inland Empire, aptly if not over-optimistically named). What they have in common are the complexities of their ethnicities, which are so often reduced to the colors of their skin and the biases and assumptions made thereof, the depths of their desires, and the richness of their lives.
We meet Johnny Frias, a CHP officer who descends from Mexican immigrants and Indigenous Californians. Ximena, who survived a harrowing journey from Oaxaca to work, undocumented, as a maid. Matelasse Rodrigue, a Black woman of California and Cajun heritage who is raising her two young sons after their father left to become a capoeira master and internet sensation, pretending to be Brazilian and not a local boy from the Coachella Valley. There are a dozen more characters, and one of the singular astonishments of this novel is how Susan Straight brings them all to vivid life; even the most minor has depth and color that make their presence critical to the story as a whole. But these three form the central cast that carry the story through twenty years of family, friends, and a changing landscape.
The landscape itself is a character and even at its most villainous— in flame, in searing, unforgiving heat, in drought and dark — Straight writes with awe and love for the difficult, cruel beauty of these valleys and mountains. I learned aspects of California I'd never known as Straight considers the indigenous, pioneer and migrant heritage of its farmsteads, citrus groves, the growth of its towns and cities.
Mecca is beautifully and skillfully written, the author able to inhabit this multiplicity of voices and perspectives with authority and ease. I celebrate that a writer has the perception, sensitivity and certainty to write outside her own racial, ethnic, linguistic and gender experience. The story does suffer somewhat from its own immediacy, getting bogged down in multiple ripped-from-the-headlines catastrophes, including the pandemic. There is a twist near the end that serves to bring us back to the story's beginning, but it's so weird and fantastical that I kept looking around, metaphorically, to see if I'd missed something. It jarred me out of the rest of this transformative novel.
This is the first Susan Straight novel I've read, and I look forward to delving into her backlist.
August 2, 2022
My gosh, I loved the beauty of the multiple narratives -- and narrators -- in this remarkable book set in and around Coachella. It's a novel of linked threads of people of color, people who have lived in the area for centuries and recent immigrants, some legal and some illegal. The courage and humor and tension that brings their stories to life is breathtaking. Susan Straight channels so many voices, and she creates them with grace and beauty and authenticity. I loved this book. I'll be thinking about it a very long while.
March 3, 2025
"Because no matter what Mrs. Bunny said, or much money she gave Ximena, she could always call ICE if she wanted to. Ximena never forgot that."
“Mecca”, written by Susan Straight is a book that highlights the lives of those who are often forgotten about. It is a book full of contradictions and paradoxes. A book full of intersecting lives in Southern California that is devoid of glitz and glamour. A setting that is noteworthy for its foreboding and capricious weather patterns, whether it be scorching hot days, wildfires or earthquakes. Even, the title is full of incongruity, how could a veritable hellscape be a Mecca?
The opening of the novel begins with Johnny Frias, a CHIPS patrolman who despite his heritage is not like Ponch. He is a 39 year old man with a few regrets whose life has devolved into traffic stops and settling petty disputes. He grieves for a mother who has passed on due to pneumonia and a life that has passed him by. He is like the novel as a whole, a man of anomalies. His greatest attribute is his steadfastness and patience which for most lifestyles and professions is a plus but in dealing with split second decisions as an officer can be a negative. He is a family man, kind to his ailing father and gentle with his friends who has never married or had kids. Even his origins are of a contradictory nature. Despite his proud ancestry, his mother is able to trace their heritage before the founding of the United States, due to his complexion he is told to, “Go back where you came from.” In a world that is full of unforgiving people who try to exert their power and dominance over others, Johnny is the rare bird who shows mercy.
We are next introduced to Ximena, an illegal immigrant who is from the state of Oaxaca in Mexico. She is in the ultimate no win situation, being forced into servitude as an orphan with only an Uncle to watch out for her and a slew of concerns. Chief among these is the fact at any time she can be denounced and forced to return to Mexico. Another issue is she lacks the language skills to communicate in her new surroundings. In spite of that she is a fervent learner who relishes the opportunity to study with her brainy cousin. She attempts to make sense of English-which confounds me even as a native speaker, by incorporating words she knows in Spanish and Mixtec. She also has had two great tragedies foisted on her during the perilous journey up North. One resulting in death, the other in life.
There are other threads in this tapestry, this mélange of cultures and heritages. The author, Susan Straight did many admirable things with this work but her ambition in creating so many parallel lives towards the midpoint felt ponderous. There were forays into various lives that while interesting and important stopped momentum. I did enjoy that the characters were never pigeonholed, they were fully realized. Whether it was the nurse, Merry who underwent a senseless tragedy or Matelassé a florist whose husband, Reynaldo has abandoned her and her children to live as a Brazilian martial artist, we are shown a vivid portrait of them. One thing that stuck with me was the exchanges that Merry had with trolls and media after she was met with scrutiny during her most trying hour. Merry, a woman of indomitable strength was most peeved that one of the sports journalists did not even know who Ralph Sampson is, let alone that he liked to sew. Grief is one of those things that can manifest in inexplicable ways and someone getting pissed due to someone’s ignorance or perceived ignorance about something they should know about was an interesting take. But that is the thing with trying to make sense from something that is senseless, you oftentimes focus on something irrelevant because what else can you do? There is also a COVID storyline involving Dante, who is forced to live a life of seclusion when his mother and subsequently his father get the vexing virus. Like I said, at some point Ms. Straight was oversaturating us with characters and perspectives, and they felt blended together instead of being separate and unique. The final scene ends in a cliffhanger with a standoff between ICE and multiple members of families of indigenous blood and some migrants on tribal land. While, there is not a clear cut conclusion the arid land that has provided for centuries will continue to harbor sun scorched inhabitants.
Perhaps the biggest contradiction that this novel highlights is the discrepancy between the reality and the perception of the immigrant issue. People, who pick our fruit, wipe our asses when we are too frail as infants or in our dotage and in general take care of us by doing many thankless jobs are treated as pariahs or scourges. Many of them have roots much deeper in American land than those who deride themselves as foreigners. People who have cultivated families and friendships that would be the envy of any red-blooded “patriotic” American who aspire to live in a Rockwellian utopia. No doubt, the issue of immigration both legal and illegal is complex; so I novel like this one written with much compassion is an important one to demonstrate that in spite of differences we all as humans strive for the same thing.
“Mecca”, written by Susan Straight is a book that highlights the lives of those who are often forgotten about. It is a book full of contradictions and paradoxes. A book full of intersecting lives in Southern California that is devoid of glitz and glamour. A setting that is noteworthy for its foreboding and capricious weather patterns, whether it be scorching hot days, wildfires or earthquakes. Even, the title is full of incongruity, how could a veritable hellscape be a Mecca?
The opening of the novel begins with Johnny Frias, a CHIPS patrolman who despite his heritage is not like Ponch. He is a 39 year old man with a few regrets whose life has devolved into traffic stops and settling petty disputes. He grieves for a mother who has passed on due to pneumonia and a life that has passed him by. He is like the novel as a whole, a man of anomalies. His greatest attribute is his steadfastness and patience which for most lifestyles and professions is a plus but in dealing with split second decisions as an officer can be a negative. He is a family man, kind to his ailing father and gentle with his friends who has never married or had kids. Even his origins are of a contradictory nature. Despite his proud ancestry, his mother is able to trace their heritage before the founding of the United States, due to his complexion he is told to, “Go back where you came from.” In a world that is full of unforgiving people who try to exert their power and dominance over others, Johnny is the rare bird who shows mercy.
We are next introduced to Ximena, an illegal immigrant who is from the state of Oaxaca in Mexico. She is in the ultimate no win situation, being forced into servitude as an orphan with only an Uncle to watch out for her and a slew of concerns. Chief among these is the fact at any time she can be denounced and forced to return to Mexico. Another issue is she lacks the language skills to communicate in her new surroundings. In spite of that she is a fervent learner who relishes the opportunity to study with her brainy cousin. She attempts to make sense of English-which confounds me even as a native speaker, by incorporating words she knows in Spanish and Mixtec. She also has had two great tragedies foisted on her during the perilous journey up North. One resulting in death, the other in life.
There are other threads in this tapestry, this mélange of cultures and heritages. The author, Susan Straight did many admirable things with this work but her ambition in creating so many parallel lives towards the midpoint felt ponderous. There were forays into various lives that while interesting and important stopped momentum. I did enjoy that the characters were never pigeonholed, they were fully realized. Whether it was the nurse, Merry who underwent a senseless tragedy or Matelassé a florist whose husband, Reynaldo has abandoned her and her children to live as a Brazilian martial artist, we are shown a vivid portrait of them. One thing that stuck with me was the exchanges that Merry had with trolls and media after she was met with scrutiny during her most trying hour. Merry, a woman of indomitable strength was most peeved that one of the sports journalists did not even know who Ralph Sampson is, let alone that he liked to sew. Grief is one of those things that can manifest in inexplicable ways and someone getting pissed due to someone’s ignorance or perceived ignorance about something they should know about was an interesting take. But that is the thing with trying to make sense from something that is senseless, you oftentimes focus on something irrelevant because what else can you do? There is also a COVID storyline involving Dante, who is forced to live a life of seclusion when his mother and subsequently his father get the vexing virus. Like I said, at some point Ms. Straight was oversaturating us with characters and perspectives, and they felt blended together instead of being separate and unique. The final scene ends in a cliffhanger with a standoff between ICE and multiple members of families of indigenous blood and some migrants on tribal land. While, there is not a clear cut conclusion the arid land that has provided for centuries will continue to harbor sun scorched inhabitants.
Perhaps the biggest contradiction that this novel highlights is the discrepancy between the reality and the perception of the immigrant issue. People, who pick our fruit, wipe our asses when we are too frail as infants or in our dotage and in general take care of us by doing many thankless jobs are treated as pariahs or scourges. Many of them have roots much deeper in American land than those who deride themselves as foreigners. People who have cultivated families and friendships that would be the envy of any red-blooded “patriotic” American who aspire to live in a Rockwellian utopia. No doubt, the issue of immigration both legal and illegal is complex; so I novel like this one written with much compassion is an important one to demonstrate that in spite of differences we all as humans strive for the same thing.
September 16, 2022
This is a very well written an somewhat interesting book, if you are not tired of reading about the same topics and stereotyped characters.
It’s like a collection of short stories, but they are intertwined.
It’s about family and racism in the multi ethnic Southern California, set in the current time (and yes, COVID is mentioned).
The chapters move from character to character, some with first-person narrators, some with third (one chapter is devastating).
There is plenty use of Spanish (words or phrases) without any translation, so it can be frustrating to some readers (here is one of the advantages reading ebooks, specially from your phone, as you can touch the word or select a phrase to obtain the meaning from a web site, but it does distract you from reading - it works with e-readers also, but the process is slower and it must be connected to the wi-fi).
I played the audiobook as I read the book, to make it more lively. The narration by Frankie Corzo, Patricia R. Floyd & Shaun Taylor-Corbett were good, although not dramatized.
Book: 384 pages, 112k words (8-9 hours read)
Audiobook: 12.8 hours (normal speed)
It’s like a collection of short stories, but they are intertwined.
It’s about family and racism in the multi ethnic Southern California, set in the current time (and yes, COVID is mentioned).
The chapters move from character to character, some with first-person narrators, some with third (one chapter is devastating).
There is plenty use of Spanish (words or phrases) without any translation, so it can be frustrating to some readers (here is one of the advantages reading ebooks, specially from your phone, as you can touch the word or select a phrase to obtain the meaning from a web site, but it does distract you from reading - it works with e-readers also, but the process is slower and it must be connected to the wi-fi).
I played the audiobook as I read the book, to make it more lively. The narration by Frankie Corzo, Patricia R. Floyd & Shaun Taylor-Corbett were good, although not dramatized.
Book: 384 pages, 112k words (8-9 hours read)
Audiobook: 12.8 hours (normal speed)
March 30, 2023
2022 will forever be the year I first met two writers who have been writing for some time, but who are new to me, and who rocked my world and changed the way I look at writing and at America. The first was Percival Everett, the second is Susan Straight. I believe we are headed for a two-way tie for book of the year.
Mecca rocked my world. I usually hate publisher's blurbs, I often think "what book did they read?" Not so here, so instead of any plot summary I will steal a couple sentences from the blurb:
In Mecca, the celebrated novelist Susan Straight crafts an unforgettable American epic, examining race, history, family, and destiny through the interlocking stories of a group of native Californians all gasping for air.
In chapters focused on different members of a loose group of friends and family Straight creates rich and complex characters, heroes and antiheroes. whose lives are relentlessly impacted and yet not fully defined by US and state government/law enforcement and their approach to non-white people. (This slate of narrators includes one character who is a a cop, and that is a very interesting perspective.) There is one storyline with white characters, it is a hoot and I am pretty sure it was inspired by The Big Lebowski, and it serves as a great foil for the rest of the stories - the things white people with money can get away with - while also revealing a lot about being a woman and surviving. Really almost all the stories do that, even the stories of the minor characters. The women in this book are so freaking strong. Not in any cinematic "you go girl" "it is all about me" "I'm gonna buy those Jimmy Choo's" way. No these women have shit to get done and they do it. They raise children without the support of fathers, they endure rapes and miscarriages and beatings and they show up for backbreaking work the next day, they stand up to men with guns because their babies are waiting for them, they resent but accept with grace and equanimity that men can take off to pursue their dreams but they do not have that option. And Straight explores the limitations and joys of family. There are questions here, giant and policy focused, and also matters that are intimate and part of every day real life. I don't know how she did it, but she did.
Straight was mentored by James Baldwin, and I can see that in this book, but more than that I saw a lot of Steinbeck. But in the end the book is completely Straight's own. There is not a thing derivative about it. It is a nuanced fresh empathic take on a spectacularly complicated group of dynamics, and it is a plain old great story about very real people. If you are looking for answers though, Straight provides none -- she offers only perspective so you can better consider the world.
I listened to this, and the audiobook narration by Frankie Corzo, Patricia R. Floyd, and Shaun Taylor-Corbett was excellent.
Mecca rocked my world. I usually hate publisher's blurbs, I often think "what book did they read?" Not so here, so instead of any plot summary I will steal a couple sentences from the blurb:
In Mecca, the celebrated novelist Susan Straight crafts an unforgettable American epic, examining race, history, family, and destiny through the interlocking stories of a group of native Californians all gasping for air.
In chapters focused on different members of a loose group of friends and family Straight creates rich and complex characters, heroes and antiheroes. whose lives are relentlessly impacted and yet not fully defined by US and state government/law enforcement and their approach to non-white people. (This slate of narrators includes one character who is a a cop, and that is a very interesting perspective.) There is one storyline with white characters, it is a hoot and I am pretty sure it was inspired by The Big Lebowski, and it serves as a great foil for the rest of the stories - the things white people with money can get away with - while also revealing a lot about being a woman and surviving. Really almost all the stories do that, even the stories of the minor characters. The women in this book are so freaking strong. Not in any cinematic "you go girl" "it is all about me" "I'm gonna buy those Jimmy Choo's" way. No these women have shit to get done and they do it. They raise children without the support of fathers, they endure rapes and miscarriages and beatings and they show up for backbreaking work the next day, they stand up to men with guns because their babies are waiting for them, they resent but accept with grace and equanimity that men can take off to pursue their dreams but they do not have that option. And Straight explores the limitations and joys of family. There are questions here, giant and policy focused, and also matters that are intimate and part of every day real life. I don't know how she did it, but she did.
Straight was mentored by James Baldwin, and I can see that in this book, but more than that I saw a lot of Steinbeck. But in the end the book is completely Straight's own. There is not a thing derivative about it. It is a nuanced fresh empathic take on a spectacularly complicated group of dynamics, and it is a plain old great story about very real people. If you are looking for answers though, Straight provides none -- she offers only perspective so you can better consider the world.
I listened to this, and the audiobook narration by Frankie Corzo, Patricia R. Floyd, and Shaun Taylor-Corbett was excellent.
March 14, 2022
The opening chapters of this series of interlocking stories features John Freis, a California highway patrolman who represents the embodiment of the history of Southern California. He carries in his dna the mixed heritage of Mexican settlers with Indigenous people who have inhabited the land ever since there was land to inhabit, and every day faces the insults of scofflaws he lights up (pulls over) during the course of his job. The rollout of this complicated history begins during the administration of a person who has made it acceptable to some (usually wearing MAGA caps) to denigrate those they deem inferior, those who could actually better lay claim to the land they both inhabit. Susan Straight has created a masterpiece, each segment fitting in with one another, with a keen eye for tragedy, humanity and familial connections. Carried through into present day, these characters endure elements of heartbreak and strength including the climate change induced firestorms, life under the pandemic, and the prevailing Santa Ana winds. Although it it the first, this is definitely not the last Susan Straight book I'll read.
May 5, 2022
One hundred miles east of San Diego and Los Angeles, lies the vast farming and desert area known as California’s Inland Empire. The people that live in Mecca and Indio within the eastern Coachella Valley live a hardscrabble existence. Straight has chosen to weave the stories of her multicultural characters in interconnected short stories reminiscent of the style of Tommy Orange or Elizabeth Strout. They are a mix of ethnicities and backgrounds, including Black, Latino, Cajun, indigenous Mexican, Native American, and white.
There is Johnny Frias, a Latinx/Native American motorcycle cop, who kills a rapist when he catches the man beating up his victim and in turn threatens Frias with a knife. There is Tenefire, a promising young basketball player who is shot by police when he drops his phone when going through a drive-thru window at a fast-food restaurant. Ximena’s uncle prepares the illegal hotel maid for raids by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials (ICE). Matelasse Rodrigue is a single mother trying to raise two young boys while also helping her friends and family with their own hardships.
Straight focuses on Southern California families that live in old canyon homes vulnerable to fire, courtyard communities that harbor undocumented families, and people that survive because of their tight hold on their families and community. Straight not only highlights how where one lives plays an integral role in how one views their place in the world—but how language, racism, and cultural differences are barriers that one must overcome.
Resolutions for Straight’s engaging characters are largely lacking. And perhaps that is Straight’s point.
There is Johnny Frias, a Latinx/Native American motorcycle cop, who kills a rapist when he catches the man beating up his victim and in turn threatens Frias with a knife. There is Tenefire, a promising young basketball player who is shot by police when he drops his phone when going through a drive-thru window at a fast-food restaurant. Ximena’s uncle prepares the illegal hotel maid for raids by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials (ICE). Matelasse Rodrigue is a single mother trying to raise two young boys while also helping her friends and family with their own hardships.
Straight focuses on Southern California families that live in old canyon homes vulnerable to fire, courtyard communities that harbor undocumented families, and people that survive because of their tight hold on their families and community. Straight not only highlights how where one lives plays an integral role in how one views their place in the world—but how language, racism, and cultural differences are barriers that one must overcome.
Resolutions for Straight’s engaging characters are largely lacking. And perhaps that is Straight’s point.
November 19, 2024
Susan Straight's eighth novel, her latest, is as perfect as all the others.
Some novels are ripped from the headlines. Susan Straight writes the stories that never even get in the news. Her characters live in the interstices of Southern California's unique melting pot of Black, Mexican, Native American and your ubiquitous lower-middle class whites. Lives are played out in an uneasy but rich dance of families, dreams and the work required just to get by.
Yet her focus is on love of family, self reliance, and strength. She shows that the low times, the frustrations, the tragedies are all part of the epic amount of work that gets done by the mostly unsung people we ignore.
Amazing!
Review after my second reading:
I reread this for a reading group. We were supposed to meet on November 6 but that was the day after the election, 2024, and I could not get myself to leave my house. Then one of our members had to travel to be with a friend who is terribly ill, so we have yet to meet.
If possible, my second reading was even more amazing than my first. I looked up all the Spanish words as I read and felt enlightened on how immigrants must navigate language every minute of every day until they learn enough English to fit in.
Several other lightbulbs went off in my mind including how much work immigrants do in our society, as well as how much harder they must work as they try to evade ICE and all of the other combined ignorance in American society. After all, except for Native Americans, every other citizen or resident in the United States is either a recent immigrant or is descended from earlier immigrants including enslaved people who did not come to America by choice. Susan Straight makes all of this so clear in her novel.
Hopefully our “melting pot” experiment will not melt our country and that takes a huge amount of hope!
Some novels are ripped from the headlines. Susan Straight writes the stories that never even get in the news. Her characters live in the interstices of Southern California's unique melting pot of Black, Mexican, Native American and your ubiquitous lower-middle class whites. Lives are played out in an uneasy but rich dance of families, dreams and the work required just to get by.
Yet her focus is on love of family, self reliance, and strength. She shows that the low times, the frustrations, the tragedies are all part of the epic amount of work that gets done by the mostly unsung people we ignore.
Amazing!
Review after my second reading:
I reread this for a reading group. We were supposed to meet on November 6 but that was the day after the election, 2024, and I could not get myself to leave my house. Then one of our members had to travel to be with a friend who is terribly ill, so we have yet to meet.
If possible, my second reading was even more amazing than my first. I looked up all the Spanish words as I read and felt enlightened on how immigrants must navigate language every minute of every day until they learn enough English to fit in.
Several other lightbulbs went off in my mind including how much work immigrants do in our society, as well as how much harder they must work as they try to evade ICE and all of the other combined ignorance in American society. After all, except for Native Americans, every other citizen or resident in the United States is either a recent immigrant or is descended from earlier immigrants including enslaved people who did not come to America by choice. Susan Straight makes all of this so clear in her novel.
Hopefully our “melting pot” experiment will not melt our country and that takes a huge amount of hope!
August 5, 2022
A killing 20 years ago, an abandoned infant, and love of such intensity it morphs into pain – these are the convergence points that coalesce into an immersive novel set in southern California. No, it's not the California of hustle, of cars clogging the 91, the 55, and the 101. This is the California of roots set down before California was California, before the United States was the United States.
Sure, they have darker skin – the legacy of erratic genetics and outdoor labor in a sun-baked climate. All too frequent racial slurs provoke responses like that of Johnny Frias' mother, a woman of strength and tenacity: “'Mi gente estaba aquí antes que tu gente.' My people were here before your people.” (p. 58) Their very presence makes a travesty of ICE's racial profiling, conducted with increasing aggression and impunity: “'What citizen are you a country of?' he said, real loud and slow,....I lost my shit. 'Are you serious? I was born in San Bernardino. St. Bernardino's Hospital. Is that American enough for you?'....I jerked my arm out of his fingers, but he clamped his hand on my shoulder....I looked at his vest name tag. 'Chad McDonnell. Were you born in Ireland?'” (p.336) When they make a mistake, they don't even apologize. They get angry and belligerent. This is the California where if you have dark skin, you learn to be hyper-vigilant.
The depth of that hyper-vigilance is revealed in an astonishing litany of warnings. Johnny Frias, now a highway patrol officer, intones the rule: always approach the vehicle you've stopped from the passenger side so you can watch his hands and knees. Women are reminded: hold your keys in a fist, sticking out, ready to blind any would-be rapists. Always carry cash: a stack of $5's, $10's, and $20's – you'll need it when an earthquake hits and all the ATM's go out. This is your script if ICE stops you: do not smile, do not cry, look straight ahead, say you live in Mecca and pull out your ID.
Concurrent stories of past and present are told by a handful of characters. Although the novel opens with Johnny Frias, he is not the central character but more of a connecting element. An abrupt transition introduces Ximena, an illegal migrant from Oaxaca. She speaks Mixtec, not Spanish, and diligently records the vocabulary she needs in Mixtec, Spanish and English. Johnny has been making a similar study of language. He speaks perfect English but is acutely conscious of ever-changing American slang. Meaning is to be found in the subtext of that vast flow of ever-changing idioms.
Matelasse, Merry, and the children of the succeeding generation will give witness to the events that fill this novel. These characters converge at Johnny's father's ranch to help clean up the debris and ash from a fire that swept through the canyons and narrowly missed the buildings. The gathering is an expression of community. There will be a second convergence, more sober but also hopeful on the Torres-Martinez Indian Reservation where Ximena's extended family is living. That gathering is an expression of family. Community and family anchor these people and breathe life into this novel.
The entire book has a symphonic structure of layered themes tentatively resolving only to revive. It opens with the sound of the same Santa Ana winds Johnny remembers from his childhood. “The old metal weather stripping played like the gods pressed their mouths around the screens in the living room where I slept when I was growing up.” (p.3) That wind is then joined by the ranchera music from a radio and the anxious voices of some pet canaries.
However indifferent nature might be, it cannot compare to the ravages humans inflict on themselves. Ximena finds work at an exclusive spa for cosmetic surgeries. She cleans the patients' rooms: “Dirty sheets, dirty dishes – they didn't care. They didn't want anyone to see their black eyes, their skin etched raw as butchered meat, their noses swollen like gourds.” (p.76)
This was an unforgettable book filled with powerful imagery and unique voices. Thanks to the Goodreads friends whose reviews enticed me to read this book.
Sure, they have darker skin – the legacy of erratic genetics and outdoor labor in a sun-baked climate. All too frequent racial slurs provoke responses like that of Johnny Frias' mother, a woman of strength and tenacity: “'Mi gente estaba aquí antes que tu gente.' My people were here before your people.” (p. 58) Their very presence makes a travesty of ICE's racial profiling, conducted with increasing aggression and impunity: “'What citizen are you a country of?' he said, real loud and slow,....I lost my shit. 'Are you serious? I was born in San Bernardino. St. Bernardino's Hospital. Is that American enough for you?'....I jerked my arm out of his fingers, but he clamped his hand on my shoulder....I looked at his vest name tag. 'Chad McDonnell. Were you born in Ireland?'” (p.336) When they make a mistake, they don't even apologize. They get angry and belligerent. This is the California where if you have dark skin, you learn to be hyper-vigilant.
The depth of that hyper-vigilance is revealed in an astonishing litany of warnings. Johnny Frias, now a highway patrol officer, intones the rule: always approach the vehicle you've stopped from the passenger side so you can watch his hands and knees. Women are reminded: hold your keys in a fist, sticking out, ready to blind any would-be rapists. Always carry cash: a stack of $5's, $10's, and $20's – you'll need it when an earthquake hits and all the ATM's go out. This is your script if ICE stops you: do not smile, do not cry, look straight ahead, say you live in Mecca and pull out your ID.
Concurrent stories of past and present are told by a handful of characters. Although the novel opens with Johnny Frias, he is not the central character but more of a connecting element. An abrupt transition introduces Ximena, an illegal migrant from Oaxaca. She speaks Mixtec, not Spanish, and diligently records the vocabulary she needs in Mixtec, Spanish and English. Johnny has been making a similar study of language. He speaks perfect English but is acutely conscious of ever-changing American slang. Meaning is to be found in the subtext of that vast flow of ever-changing idioms.
Matelasse, Merry, and the children of the succeeding generation will give witness to the events that fill this novel. These characters converge at Johnny's father's ranch to help clean up the debris and ash from a fire that swept through the canyons and narrowly missed the buildings. The gathering is an expression of community. There will be a second convergence, more sober but also hopeful on the Torres-Martinez Indian Reservation where Ximena's extended family is living. That gathering is an expression of family. Community and family anchor these people and breathe life into this novel.
The entire book has a symphonic structure of layered themes tentatively resolving only to revive. It opens with the sound of the same Santa Ana winds Johnny remembers from his childhood. “The old metal weather stripping played like the gods pressed their mouths around the screens in the living room where I slept when I was growing up.” (p.3) That wind is then joined by the ranchera music from a radio and the anxious voices of some pet canaries.
However indifferent nature might be, it cannot compare to the ravages humans inflict on themselves. Ximena finds work at an exclusive spa for cosmetic surgeries. She cleans the patients' rooms: “Dirty sheets, dirty dishes – they didn't care. They didn't want anyone to see their black eyes, their skin etched raw as butchered meat, their noses swollen like gourds.” (p.76)
This was an unforgettable book filled with powerful imagery and unique voices. Thanks to the Goodreads friends whose reviews enticed me to read this book.
March 11, 2022
I fear this was not the book for me. Every time I picked it back up it took a long time to get back into the story. Some scenes were very powerful and vivid, but then many didn't really have a function to the overall narrative (not a problem per se of course, but I found it distracted and made the book too long).
There was also a certain repeated hammering home of obvious points (e.g. the continuous reminder that not all non-white Californians come from Mexico... When confronted with such ignorance, the main characters in the book then simply say or think that their family has a long history in California going back to the 18th century. But to me the right answer would have rather been: I am not from Mexico, but so what if I were?).
Anyway, I am sure this will appeal to many readers more than to me, because it does have evocative writing and an interesting plot.
Many thanks to Netgalley and FSG for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
There was also a certain repeated hammering home of obvious points (e.g. the continuous reminder that not all non-white Californians come from Mexico... When confronted with such ignorance, the main characters in the book then simply say or think that their family has a long history in California going back to the 18th century. But to me the right answer would have rather been: I am not from Mexico, but so what if I were?).
Anyway, I am sure this will appeal to many readers more than to me, because it does have evocative writing and an interesting plot.
Many thanks to Netgalley and FSG for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
October 21, 2023
Loved this book! This is the California I know and love. The wind, the heat, The landscape, the people, the diversity.🌴🌵☀️💨
November 20, 2022
Mecca is a real community located in the inland desert region of southeastern California. This book tells the fictional stories of the residents, focusing on three primary characters, Johnny, Ximena, and Matelasse. Johnny is a California Highway Patrol policeman. He is haunted by a killing two decades earlier. This incident will eventually connect him to undocumented housemaid, Ximena. Matelasse is a single mom who arranges flowers for a local florist. Current events are woven into the narrative, including the recent covid pandemic.
The author brings this community to life through the interactions of multiethnic individuals (and their families and friends) who live there. The primary drawback of this method is that, by telling these separate stories, there is an overabundance of characters. There are many advantages, though. It is filled with working class people doing their best to get by and dealing regularly with rampant racism and classism. Though the vast majority were born in the US, they are viewed with suspicion – “who are you, where are you from, why are you here?” Other themes include connectedness and the importance of family and community. It provides a viewpoint of native Californians pushing back against oppression.
“I drove south, past Mecca and Thermal and Oasis, the sandy earth covered with creosote bushes and smoke trees wherever there were no aisles of palm trees. Miles of green fields, with workers throwing watermelons and cantaloupe up onto trucks. A legion of women like Pharaohs wearing white headdresses walked out of the rows of grapevines that stretched forever like green veins toward the purple Mecca Hills.”
The author brings this community to life through the interactions of multiethnic individuals (and their families and friends) who live there. The primary drawback of this method is that, by telling these separate stories, there is an overabundance of characters. There are many advantages, though. It is filled with working class people doing their best to get by and dealing regularly with rampant racism and classism. Though the vast majority were born in the US, they are viewed with suspicion – “who are you, where are you from, why are you here?” Other themes include connectedness and the importance of family and community. It provides a viewpoint of native Californians pushing back against oppression.
“I drove south, past Mecca and Thermal and Oasis, the sandy earth covered with creosote bushes and smoke trees wherever there were no aisles of palm trees. Miles of green fields, with workers throwing watermelons and cantaloupe up onto trucks. A legion of women like Pharaohs wearing white headdresses walked out of the rows of grapevines that stretched forever like green veins toward the purple Mecca Hills.”
April 3, 2022
This is a hard book to forget. It spins itself into your soul, and opens one's minds to the prejudices and racism against the people who cultivate our gardens, work in orchards, and change beds in hospitals and nursing homes. These are the people who Trump disparaged during his term in office. Straight begins this wrenching wrenching saga with a CHP officer, Johnny, who patrols the California highway pushing over 200 miles per day. As opposed to the fear induced by by being confronted by an officer for some violation, it is Johnny, a son of Mexican and California parents , who actually has to fear for his life though he takes it in stride. Unfortunately, when he was just starting out on the police force, he witnessed a rape by a white man in Bee Valley, and shot him while the victim ran away. With no witnesses to verify his story he buried the man, never telling anyone one, but haunting him ever since. His story is braided with another 3 main characters creating a multiethnic narrative illustrating the interwoven history of these characters both familial and private. It is the latter that highlights the strength of these people whose families were the foundation of California but who were always anxious about ICE, being ripped apart from one another, hurt or fatally wounded. However, their family bonds, resilient inner strength and community would always give them fortitude.
This earnest novel is so impassioned, so gorgeously descriptive with enormous breadth that it is hard to do it justice. I am leaving out soooo much in this review...Please discover it for yourself. There is much delight into examining the sense of place, and the interior of these characters lives and interactions. What a true gem.
This earnest novel is so impassioned, so gorgeously descriptive with enormous breadth that it is hard to do it justice. I am leaving out soooo much in this review...Please discover it for yourself. There is much delight into examining the sense of place, and the interior of these characters lives and interactions. What a true gem.
December 6, 2025
Check out the many splendid and revealing reviews that already exist on GR. I really can't add anything useful to what's already been said. Set early in the Covid pandemic, "Mecca" sheds harsh but deeply empathetic light on the fissures of class and race that exist in southern California (though doubtless the book could have been set in Florida or New York or Texas). Susan Straight gets into the lives and minds of ordinary people -- cops, people of color, families, undocumented aliens terrified of ICE, the people who take advantage of them -- who are otherwise invisible and voiceless in our culture. Their loves, aspirations, fears, frustrations, heartbreak, the ways in which they get by in a world where simply getting by is sometimes heroic, the ways they take care of one another. The people that John Steinbeck would be writing about were he alive today. Vivid, moving, and deeply illuminating. And very well performed. I'm grateful for my GR friends whose reviews of "Mecca" made me pick it up -- I might otherwise have missed it.
March 12, 2022
Six stars!!! Susan Straight's new book (out March 15, 2022) blew me away. The descriptive writing is amongst the best I've ever read. You can tell the author has lived her entire life in Southern California. She captures the places and people with absolute perfection. All the major literary awards will have Mecca shortlisted this year.
I feel almost foolish trying to pen a review as my prose is so ordinary compared to what I just finished reading. So I won't say much more - just trust me, get a copy of this book, settle in, and allow yourself to be carried deep into Susan Straight's world.
You should be aware of a few aspects of the book going in, though.
The novel reads as a connected set of short stories. The first chapter transition somewhat jolted me as the story suddenly changed to entirely different characters. The divergent characters and stories eventually intertwine, so stick with it.
I was glad I read a Kindle version; when a character comes back into the story, I used the search function to remind me of the previous story. The large cast of characters and multiple settings run together and apart with complicated zones of intersectionality - much like the SoCal freeways. Mecca isn't easy, but it is a profoundly fulfilling, rich read.
I am most grateful to NetGalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
I feel almost foolish trying to pen a review as my prose is so ordinary compared to what I just finished reading. So I won't say much more - just trust me, get a copy of this book, settle in, and allow yourself to be carried deep into Susan Straight's world.
You should be aware of a few aspects of the book going in, though.
The novel reads as a connected set of short stories. The first chapter transition somewhat jolted me as the story suddenly changed to entirely different characters. The divergent characters and stories eventually intertwine, so stick with it.
I was glad I read a Kindle version; when a character comes back into the story, I used the search function to remind me of the previous story. The large cast of characters and multiple settings run together and apart with complicated zones of intersectionality - much like the SoCal freeways. Mecca isn't easy, but it is a profoundly fulfilling, rich read.
I am most grateful to NetGalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
June 1, 2022
Eye-opening and masterful, deserves more accolades in spite of the interweaving stories not having much hook.
March 30, 2022
Don’t be misled by the title. This novel has nothing to do with the Middle East. We’re talking Mecca, California, a desert community justbnorth of the Salton Sea, a land of Joshua trees, scorpions and the Santa Ana winds. This is the land where Johnny Frias grew up. He’s been riding motorcycle for the California Highway Patrol about two decades now. When he was a rookie, he killed a man, in self-defence and to protect the young woman the man, jumped up on something, was raping and savagely assaulting. The girl, Bunny, scrambled up and took off in her car, leaving Johnny with no witness. Johnny knew what would happen if he reported it—with the deep-rooted racism in the department, it wouldn’t go well for him. So he covered it up. But all these years later, it still haunts him, and he’s still looking for Bunny.
That event is what ties together the disparate characters in the story, though they mostly don’t realize it. This is a cast of characters of a type I don’t remember seeing much in all my reading. They’re the “true” Californians, descendants of Indio and Mexican and black people who came into the country before it was a country, long before borders. But racism is endemic, casual and brutal and sometimes deadly, and these many-generation Americans are still forced to prove, over and over, that they’re entitled to be there, not illegal immigrants.
This is a character-driven, big-hearted book, sometimes heart-breaking, gripping in its intensity. Highly recommended.
That event is what ties together the disparate characters in the story, though they mostly don’t realize it. This is a cast of characters of a type I don’t remember seeing much in all my reading. They’re the “true” Californians, descendants of Indio and Mexican and black people who came into the country before it was a country, long before borders. But racism is endemic, casual and brutal and sometimes deadly, and these many-generation Americans are still forced to prove, over and over, that they’re entitled to be there, not illegal immigrants.
This is a character-driven, big-hearted book, sometimes heart-breaking, gripping in its intensity. Highly recommended.
February 7, 2022
Unfortunately, I had high expectations for this novel, and the novel is well-written (not necessarily an epic, but that's fine with me), and I read it fairly quickly because I did hope to find out what happened with the main character, our motorcycle cop, and Bunny, this woman he encounters early on, but it was a long wait for them reconnect, and the ending left me still wanting a bit more (my flaw).
When I finally realized the first person narrator was different characters (perhaps I was lacking a good night's sleep) in different chapters, but the narrative remained basically the same, with the rather choppy sentences, I grew a bit weary impatiently wondering what happened to our first narrator, our cop dude, since he seemed to be the main thread of the novel.
I don't want to give away spoilers, but when the sisters find this baby, I was quite interested in that plot, but the baby basically disappeared from the novel until the end.
I loved the descriptions that took place on the family ranches, the fires, the family discussions, the grief and Grief, and the gritty realism of the novel. A lot was being pushed in a short amount of space, and once we readers loyally followed along, I felt I was hanging a bit with the ending, like a loose thread.
When I finally realized the first person narrator was different characters (perhaps I was lacking a good night's sleep) in different chapters, but the narrative remained basically the same, with the rather choppy sentences, I grew a bit weary impatiently wondering what happened to our first narrator, our cop dude, since he seemed to be the main thread of the novel.
I don't want to give away spoilers, but when the sisters find this baby, I was quite interested in that plot, but the baby basically disappeared from the novel until the end.
I loved the descriptions that took place on the family ranches, the fires, the family discussions, the grief and Grief, and the gritty realism of the novel. A lot was being pushed in a short amount of space, and once we readers loyally followed along, I felt I was hanging a bit with the ending, like a loose thread.
September 14, 2022
Susan Straight is a force to be reckoned with. I knew this after I finished reading I Been in Sorrow’s Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots after it came out in 1992, and after I sought out, bought, and read everything else she’d written that was available. When I discovered that her new novel, Mecca, was available on Net Galley, I leapt on it. My thanks go to Net Galley and to Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux for the review copy. This book is for sale now.
Mecca, an ironic title if ever there was one, is a story of race, class, and gender, and the way that they play into the “Justice” system in California. Add a generous seasoning of climate change and its horrific effects in dry, dry Southern California, and a fistful of opioid addiction, and you have a heady mix indeed. But these are all well worn ground at this point, and this book is exceptional, not because it examines complex current events, but because of Straight’s facility in building visceral characters we care about, and launching them into this maelstrom in a way that makes it impossible to forget.
We begin with Johnny Frias, an American citizen of Latino heritage. As a rookie and while off duty, he kills a man that is raping and about to murder a woman named Bunny. He panics and gets rid of the body without reporting what’s happened. Frias is on the highway patrol, and he takes all sorts of racist crap all day every day. But his family relies on him, and when push comes to shove, he loves his home and takes pride in keeping it safe.
Ximena works as a maid at a hotel for women that have had plastic surgery. One day she is cleaning a room and finds a baby! What to do? She can’t call the authorities; she’d be blamed, jailed, deported, or who knows what. She does the best thing she can think of, and of course, there’s blowback anyway.
And when a young Black man, a good student with loads of promise that has never been in any trouble at school, or with the law, is killed because the cops see his phone fall out of the car and decide it’s a gun…?
I find this story interesting from the beginning, but it really kicks into gear in a big way at roughly the forty percent mark. From that point forward, it owns me.
As should be evident from what I’ve said so far, this story is loaded with triggers. You know what you can read, and what you can’t. For those of us that can: Straight’s gift is in her ability to tell these stories naturally, and to develop these characters so completely that they almost feel like family. It is through caring about her characters that we are drawn into the events that take place around them, and the things that happen to them.
This is a complex novel with many moving parts and connections. I read part of this using the audio version, which I checked out from Seattle Bibliocommons. But whereas the narrators do a fine job, I find it easier to keep track of the characters and threads when I can see it in print. If you are someone that can’t understand a story well until you’ve heard it, go for the audio, or best of all, get both.
Highly recommended.
Mecca, an ironic title if ever there was one, is a story of race, class, and gender, and the way that they play into the “Justice” system in California. Add a generous seasoning of climate change and its horrific effects in dry, dry Southern California, and a fistful of opioid addiction, and you have a heady mix indeed. But these are all well worn ground at this point, and this book is exceptional, not because it examines complex current events, but because of Straight’s facility in building visceral characters we care about, and launching them into this maelstrom in a way that makes it impossible to forget.
We begin with Johnny Frias, an American citizen of Latino heritage. As a rookie and while off duty, he kills a man that is raping and about to murder a woman named Bunny. He panics and gets rid of the body without reporting what’s happened. Frias is on the highway patrol, and he takes all sorts of racist crap all day every day. But his family relies on him, and when push comes to shove, he loves his home and takes pride in keeping it safe.
Ximena works as a maid at a hotel for women that have had plastic surgery. One day she is cleaning a room and finds a baby! What to do? She can’t call the authorities; she’d be blamed, jailed, deported, or who knows what. She does the best thing she can think of, and of course, there’s blowback anyway.
And when a young Black man, a good student with loads of promise that has never been in any trouble at school, or with the law, is killed because the cops see his phone fall out of the car and decide it’s a gun…?
I find this story interesting from the beginning, but it really kicks into gear in a big way at roughly the forty percent mark. From that point forward, it owns me.
As should be evident from what I’ve said so far, this story is loaded with triggers. You know what you can read, and what you can’t. For those of us that can: Straight’s gift is in her ability to tell these stories naturally, and to develop these characters so completely that they almost feel like family. It is through caring about her characters that we are drawn into the events that take place around them, and the things that happen to them.
This is a complex novel with many moving parts and connections. I read part of this using the audio version, which I checked out from Seattle Bibliocommons. But whereas the narrators do a fine job, I find it easier to keep track of the characters and threads when I can see it in print. If you are someone that can’t understand a story well until you’ve heard it, go for the audio, or best of all, get both.
Highly recommended.
February 15, 2022
I was grabbed by the opening to this book: “The wind started up at three a.m., the same way it had for hundreds of years, the same way I used to hear it blowing so hard around our little house in the canyon that loose windowsills sounded like harmonicas. The old weather stripping played like the gods pressed their mouths around the screens in the living room, where I slept when I was growing up.”
I want to say I loved this book... but I just liked it. It is a compelling story - or at least that is how it starts. But then it takes some twist and turns, not all of which make sense and still don't in the finishing of it. This story is one of Southern California... but not one you might expect. It is about people who have been in Southern California for eons and those who are brought by coyotes from Mexico and how the two, though very different, are considered the same. I loved learning about the history that Straight brings to life in the pages... the past sometimes merging with the present in a very compelling way.
Things I struggled with... there is lots of dialog in Spanish - with no translation. I also think that some of this book (about 2/3's in) could have been edited out.
The ending was not at all what I expected.
I would like to thank Netgalley and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux for this ARC.
I want to say I loved this book... but I just liked it. It is a compelling story - or at least that is how it starts. But then it takes some twist and turns, not all of which make sense and still don't in the finishing of it. This story is one of Southern California... but not one you might expect. It is about people who have been in Southern California for eons and those who are brought by coyotes from Mexico and how the two, though very different, are considered the same. I loved learning about the history that Straight brings to life in the pages... the past sometimes merging with the present in a very compelling way.
Things I struggled with... there is lots of dialog in Spanish - with no translation. I also think that some of this book (about 2/3's in) could have been edited out.
The ending was not at all what I expected.
I would like to thank Netgalley and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux for this ARC.
March 22, 2022
"Mecca" by Susan Straight is a gorgeously crafted, heartbreaking novel. Its characters will haunt me for months. There are multiple storylines told from multiple points of view, but at its core, "Mecca" is about racism and prejudice. Ms. Straight's descriptive writing places a reader right in the middle of the characters' lives. I felt the characters' terror as they escaped from the California wildfires; their sadness at the loss of a child; their helplessness at the loss of a job; and their hopelessness when ICE shows up. This is the story of another Southern California, behind the glitz, glamour, and fake façade of Hollywood.
Susan Straight's writing is hands down some of the finest I have ever read. I will not be surprised if "Mecca" is shortlisted for multiple literary awards in 2022.
Many thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for the privilege of reading an advanced digital copy of this tremendous novel in exchange for my honest review.
Susan Straight's writing is hands down some of the finest I have ever read. I will not be surprised if "Mecca" is shortlisted for multiple literary awards in 2022.
Many thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for the privilege of reading an advanced digital copy of this tremendous novel in exchange for my honest review.
November 22, 2022
In this wonderful complement to her memoir, In the Company of Women, Susan Straight’s novel paints a moving portrait of primarily BIPoC characters living on her non glamorous home turf of inland Southern California. An excellent and heartbreaking depiction of the racism these characters encounter, and a fine pandemic novel to boot.
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