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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.
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.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.
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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First Sentence:
ELVIA PARTED her hair down the center and braided it tightly, to keep it off her neck and to piss off her father and his girlfriend. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
cricket feet, highwire moon, plywood shelter, linen plant, chainlink fence, foster mom, yerba santa Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Rio Seco, San Cristobal, Sandy Narlette, Tina Marie, Don Rana, Yukon Street, San Diego, Cap'n Crunch, Santa Catarina, Uncle Emiliano, Colonia Pedregal, Dos Arroyos, Palm Springs, Rogelio Martinez, Sands Motel, Serafina Mendez, Yukon Avenue, Agua Dulce, Palm Avenue, San Francisco, Santa Ysabel, Taco Bell, Virgen de Guadalupe, Angeles Linen, Corn Pops New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | First Pages | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
ELVIA PARTED her hair down the center and braided it tightly, to keep it off her neck and to piss off her father and his girlfriend. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
cricket feet, highwire moon, plywood shelter, linen plant, chainlink fence, foster mom, yerba santa Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Rio Seco, San Cristobal, Sandy Narlette, Tina Marie, Don Rana, Yukon Street, San Diego, Cap'n Crunch, Santa Catarina, Uncle Emiliano, Colonia Pedregal, Dos Arroyos, Palm Springs, Rogelio Martinez, Sands Motel, Serafina Mendez, Yukon Avenue, Agua Dulce, Palm Avenue, San Francisco, Santa Ysabel, Taco Bell, Virgen de Guadalupe, Angeles Linen, Corn Pops New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | First Pages | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
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10
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- Touch Magic by Jane Yolen in Front Matter
- Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights by Susan Straight in Front Matter
- The Gettin Place by Susan Straight in Front Matter
- Great Books for High School Kids: A Teacher's Guide to Books That Can Change Teens' Lives by Amy Crawford on 5 pages
- Unnatural Disaster: The Nation on Hurricane Katrina by Betsy Reed in Back Matter
- Little Women (Signet Classics) by Louisa May Alcott in Front Matter
- Life As We Know It: A Collection of Personal Essays from Salon.com by Jennifer Foote Sweeney in Back Matter
- The Book of Dead Birds: A Novel by Gayle Brandeis in Front Matter
See all 10 books citing this book
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