Highwire Moon [Hardcover]

Susan Straight (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 8, 2001

In this powerful, great-hearted story, Susan Straight takes us back to the multiracial area of southern California that is, in Faulkner’s phrase, her “postage stamp of soil.” As in her highly acclaimed earlier novels, she has created a world of richly imagined characters struggling to retain their dignity and humanity in an often brutal environment. Serafina is a young Mexican Indian girl desperate to leave her impoverished existence in Oaxaca. Emigrating illegally to California, adrift on her own, she becomes involved with Larry Foley, a feckless trucker and occasional speed freak. When a baby daughter, Elvia, is born, Serafina cares for her tenderly until the day she is forcibly separated from her child and deported. Elvia, who has known nothing but sheltering love, is thrust into foster care. Eventually reclaimed by her father, she shares his chaotic life until she becomes pregnant at fifteen. In a frenzy of fear and despair, she is Tlled with an overwhelming need to find her mother. Her quest leads her into the world of migrant farm labor, where bitter toil, violence, and sexual predation make clear how little has changed since the Joad family harvested the grapes of wrath. With unfailing compassion and profound emotional truth, HIGHWIRE MOON takes us into a hidden universe of love, pain, and stubborn hope. It is sure to appeal to Susan Straight’s ardent admirers — almost a cult readership now — and to find many new ones.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

There's much to admire in Straight's (I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots) heartrending, take-no-prisoners fourth novel, which returns to the fictional California town of Rio Seco to expose the horrific dangers facing migrant farm workers and explore how families are created and sustained. The author's dramatic powers are best displayed in the novel's harrowing opening scene, in which a Mexican Indian mother, Serafina, is separated from her toddler daughter, Elvia, and forcibly taken back to Mexico without her. Fifteen years later, Elvia, a tough-talking pregnant teenager, fights her way out of crippling poverty, drug abuse and dysfunction to find her mother. Elvia's travels are interlaced with Serafina's simultaneous agonizing trek back from Mexico. Straight portrays this world in imagery that can be quite poetic: "California was full of saints, all dead, the green freeway signs like their tombstones." But the language can also be unconvincing, as when Serafina prays for the Virgin Mary to "wrap an invisible blanket of bubbles around Elvia, each dimple of air full of exhaled love." The novel relies on some hard-to-swallow plot points: it's difficult to believe that Serafina could have stayed away so long, or that she and Elvia would set out to look for each other at the exact same time. As a novelist, Straight is unswervingly focused on the intersections of love, race, class and violence; despite its flaws, this is an engrossing demonstration of her dedication to that vision. (Aug. 8)Forecast: Some reviewers have been uncomfortable with Straight's focus, as a white writer, on black characters. Sales of her last two books were disappointing, but there is a chance that this one which takes off in a slightly different direction (though it embraces a similar social agenda) may do better.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-A gritty portrait of poor Mexican immigrants and of low-life drug abusers in LA, softened by the boundless love of a mother for her daughter and a daughter determined to find her mother. Teens will encounter brutality and suffering here, but also a realistic picture of the struggles of illegal immigrants, of the horrors of migrant labor, and of a southern California far from the glitter and wealth of Hollywood. Serafina, an illegal alien who speaks only Mixtec, is caught by police in the car she attempts to drive to a market to buy food. Her three-year-old daughter, Elvia, crouched under the dashboard, is overlooked as Serafina screams in her language. Serafina is deported, and Elvia is put in foster care, eventually with Sandy, a loving foster mother. Unluckily, her father, a trucker and occasional drug user, finds her and her life becomes a series of motel rooms. At 15, a pregnant Elvia takes off in her father's pickup truck to find her mother; at the same time, Serafina finally finds the money and the courage to reenter California in search of her daughter. Elvia eventually finds a refuge with Sandy, but Serafina's life is a series of migrant farm camps in the company of Florencio, who loves her and tries to protect her. With Sandy's help, the story ends with the promise of reconciliation.

Molly Connally, Kings Park Library, Fairfax County, VA

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (August 8, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618056149
• ISBN-13: 978-0618056149
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #791,516 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Susan Straight was born in Riverside, California, where she still lives with her three daughters, nephew, extended family of over 200, and chickens. She has published seven novels - Aquaboogie (1990), I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots (1992), Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights (1994), The Gettin Place (1996), Highwire Moon (2001), A Million Nightingales (2006), and her latest, Take One Candle Light A Room (2010). Her short stories have been published in Zoetrope All-Story, McSweeneys, The Sun, Oxford American, O Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories, and other places. Her story "The Golden Gopher," published in Los Angeles Noir, won the Edgar Award in 2007. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Harpers, The Believer, Reader's Digest, Family Circle and other magazines. Her website is www.susanstraight.com, featuring An American Family, with ties to ancestors from Switzerland, Africa, Canada, Oklahoma, Colorado, and California.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Powerful Read, September 7, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Highwire Moon (Hardcover)

This is a riveting novel of a mother and daughter's search for each other through time, distance and dreams. The book describes in heartbreaking detail the lives of undocumented farm workers, foster children, and others on the margins of our society. But the story is balanced by the presence throughout of the moving spiritual rituals that sustain many of its characters. To read Susan Straight's novels is to enter a world unique in American fiction.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Riveting and Compulsively Readable, August 17, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Highwire Moon (Hardcover)

WOW! I liked Straight's earlier novel, I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen, so I bought this right away when I saw it on the shelf. It's the story of Serafina, an indigenious Mexican woman, and Elvia, the half-American daughter she was forced to leave behind during an immigration raid. The two spend years searching for each other throught Mexico and Southern California. Straight does a great job of portraying the region's beauty and heartbreak. The characters are so flawed, yet so compelling, and the pacing and suspense makes this hard to put down. Warning, though: really packs an emotional whallop. A must for mothers and Steinbeck-lovers. Why hasn't Oprah picked this yet?

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highwire Act, September 30, 2001

By 

Thomas A. Liese (Salt Lake City, Ut United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Highwire Moon (Hardcover)

An Indian woman from Mexico travels to the U.S. for work. She meets an American and has a child with him. She is deported and has to leave the child behind. Years later the woman returns and tries to find the child, who is also seeking her.

The conflicts of culture and the struggles of people to make a living and overcome legal restrictions make the story dramatic. Interesting characters of varying backgounds abound. The harsh landscape of the Southwest, beautifully described, is the stage.

The story is suspenseful and remains in the reader's mind. Excellent.