Book description
One of The Washington Post's Ten Best Books of 2022. Finalist for the 2022 Kirkus Prize and the 2023 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. One of the New York Times' 10 Best California Books of 2022 and one of NPR's Best Books of 2022. A New York Times Book Review Editors'…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Mecca as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I am in awe of Susan Straight’s Mecca.
Set in the inland regions of Southern California, far from glamor, this novel contains a cross section of characters from California’s past, present, and future, all connected by blood, by place, by history. It begins with an act of violence committed to disrupt a sexual assault, and that act has consequences that echo through decades. The landscape, beautiful and treacherous and fire-prone, acts like one more character.
The novel ends with a standoff between the characters we’ve grown to know and love and ICE agents—a haunting and newly relevant image. A…
From Lawrence's list on books on California as fiction, myth, reality.
Among my favorite authors, Susan Straight portrays a contemporary multiethnic Southern California through fully realized characters in a unique, dynamic, often shattering story of their lives.
The cinematic movement throughout the novel begins with an amazing journey with Johnny Frias, an Hispanic motorcycle cop, and swells with epic fury in the depiction of indigenous race, cultural history, and family.
If you love Mecca...
The Lockhart Women
A mother daughter sister story set in Southern California in the 1990's. It starts on the night of the O.J. Simpson slow speed freeway chase. The Simpson case provides background noise for the novel, but the story is not about Simpson. It's about a woman whose life is falling apart.…
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