This beautifully written book pulled me in and I could not put it down. This story follows multiple people who all have a loose connection to one another in Southern California. This book was definitely a slow character driven piece. I felt like I was just along for the ride in multiple peoples lives. This story was beautifully written and really brings you into what these characters experience in day to day life. I will warn you this is not a happy tale it is a tale of struggle and hardship and surviving. This story also takes place during coronavirus and that was pretty tough to read about as well. I will say one of my favorite parts of this book was the writing. It was so beautifully written and felt like you were actually there. The only issue I found with the book was how you would leave some of these characters lives with very little resolution. I found myself wondering what happened to many of the characters. I definitely plan to pick up more from this author in the future. I would like to thank Netgalley and the publishers for a chance to read this book for an honest review.

Ms. Straight writes a novel about California that's raw and exposes some of the inequalities that we know exist but she writes about them with realness and it's extremely upsetting. Johnny has struggled and walks a fine line between being Hispanic and being a policeman. He isn't trusted by his community and he has secrets that could affect his livelihood. Mecca shows the unsettling reality that exists in the world.

Mecca is a messy book. It spreads out past the confines of a single main character. It moves from place to place in Southern California. It shifts from first to second to third person. It sprawls, but the centrifugal force of shared humanity holds it together. The somewhat central character is a motorcycle highway patrol officer who has a very proscribed and limited life because he committed a crime early in his career, a crime he fears will come to light someday but then he seems to see exposure by seeking out the witness. Then there is an undocumented hotel maid who relies on following the rules to survive suddenly confronted with an abandoned baby. There is a nurse and her family during COVID and meteor showers. Then, a young man is shot by a cop and his grieving mother sits at his bedside, facing impossible choices.

There is so much, but never too much. There is a lot of pain, but also love and family. Love and family, are a source of joy and of risk. Both are explored with compassion and love for the characters.



I struggled with Mecca at first. I had a few false starts, not even getting halfway through the first chapter. Then it just clicked the third or fourth time I picked it up and I read it straight through the night. In the end, I loved this book. These people seemed so disparate but the connections were there from long ago friendships, connecting the Latinos who have lived in California longer than the white people who suggest they go back where they came from to undocumented workers who are recent arrivals. There is a melange of experiences, multi-racial characters, Latino, indigenous, Black, Creole, Californio, marginalized in a land that was once their own.

I received an e-galley of Mecca from the publisher through NetGalley.

Mecca at Farrar, Strauss and Giroux | Macmillan
Susan Straight author site

This book was deep. Susan wove together multiple lives of indigenous Californian peoples to tell the story of Mecca. Each life connecting through an event that took place one evening. I was drawn to read this book to learn more about the indigenous people of California. Susan portrayed the prejudice and racism that indigenous Californians deal with accurately. As a Native American, I connected with this book. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning about the prejudice indigenous peoples receive. Thank you NetGalley for sending me an ARC copy!

This was a fantastic read from an author I had not previously read. I have already begun another of her books. She’s that good.

This is a story of interactions between people in Southern California. These people are US residents, but by appearance and names, are frequently accused of being immigrants. These people are varied, colorful, and very interesting. It is a social history that helped me understand lives that are quite different from mine own. This is why I read.

This book was provided to me by NetGalley in return for an honest review.

I was immediately taken in by this book - in part because I am familiar with the area in which the story takes place and in part because the characters are well developed and very interesting. The author does a magnificent job of illustrating the difficulties Hispanics and Native Americans face regularly. Being treated poorly by employers, sales persons and police. The author also illustrates how illegal aliens function. It’s a very interesting, thought-provoking book.

** spoiler alert ** An interesting read. I did not know much about the people of California. This book gave a good look at what it is like to be both an American citizen and an illegal with brown skin in that state.
The intertwined stories of the characters were well-done. At the same time, I found every story to be a tragedy and each character to have a sad life.
My only complaint was with the ending. I went back and read a bit of the end to see if I missed something. I felt the book had no closure.

A book encompassing racism, the role of police in local communities and the struggle BIPOC Americans face in their daily lives as American citizens. Well written. Disturbing.

I just couldn't get into this book. Maybe it wasn't the right time for me to read it. I think it has potential. Therefore, I can only give it a moderate review. Thank you for letting me have the opportunity to look at it.

Susan Straight offers powerful, and quite painful vignettes of the lives of outsiders looking in to the lives of the other "better" half. The story is replete with rich descriptions of life in Southern California that ring true to any native. And while the title Mecca might suggest a place you with to visit, that is only true inn these stories if you are part of the privileged class.

Forewarning: there is not resolution or end. It just stops. But it was a great multiple POV story with a lot of heart.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Mecca is a novel that will stay with me for quite some time. Not only is the writing beautiful, but I got attached to the characters. Thank to the author, publisher and NetGalley

This was a stunning book, but - like Honoree Jeffries' The Love Songs of W. E. B. DuBois and Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land - it's one that demands a physical copy to be read and absorbed as intended. I struggled reading this on my Kindle; the book jumps characters, stories, and years (like Sequoia Nagamatsu's How High We Go In The Dark, it's almost more a collection of linked short stories than a traditional novel), but all these threads are elegantly and powerfully woven together, and I know I would have benefitted from being able to flip back more easily. I wanted it to be easier to answer questions like "I know I've heard this name before, what was she doing last we saw her?" and "We've heard a description of a man who sounds like he might be this character we're just now bringing into focus - is that right?" It's by no means a bad thing when I have to work to understand a book - especially, in cases like these, where I'm getting such a vivid, raw glimpse into a world that's far outside my own lived experience - but in my own experience, an ebook isn't the right conduit, and it inhibited what I know I'll get out of this book when I read a physical copy.

Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

5/5 Stars

Susan Straight creates a stunning backdrop of modern day Southern California in her novel Mecca. Following the interwoven stories of a collected group of “family members” who have known each other in most cases since birth, Mecca is searing look into racism, the role of police in local communities and the struggle BIPOC Americans face in their daily lives as American citizens.

You won’t find a romanticized version of California in this novel. Straight tackles the lives and hardships of each of her main characters with a sense of realness and tragedy that isn’t for the faint of heart. But those defined tragedies truly echo through the story, even as she brings to live Ice raids, police brutality and sexual assault.

I’m so glad I picked this book up on a whim - it stayed in my mind long after I had finished it and I will gladly recommend to all those that are interested. My only wish was that I had more at the end.

Thanks to Net Galley, Farrar, Stars and Giroux, and the author for the ARC in exchange for my honest review!

Knockout. A big, layered, vibrant saga of non-white lives in California, and their tangled, rooted histories, This novel bursts with energy and a protective humanity. The characters, and there are many, have rich mixed heritages which often lay them open to racism and abuse. They work demanding jobs. They have powerful attachments that often deliver pain. There is a life force to them, delivered by the bushel in this affecting novel.

This book had some great themes and ideas, but ultimately i had to dnf this about 30% of the way through because it just wasn’t clicking with me unfortunately. writing style wasn’t really for me and i found myself pretty bored

MECCA by Susan Straight, National Book Award finalist, is a complex work of historical fiction told from alternating viewpoints, almost like a set of interconnected short stories. Straight introduces a young cop, Johnny Frias, his friends, and their girlfriends in a novel which spans several decades. These are mainly working-class Californians – butcher, florist, maid – of Hispanic and Indigenous descent. And there is ample opportunity for Straight to highlight the prejudice they encounter: "People like him always said up and down. They came up from Mexico. I'm never going down there. For their parents it was, they came across from Ireland. England. Germany. On a boat." Frias deals with that prejudice at work and with misunderstanding from friends and family, especially after a police shooting of a young, unarmed teen. Sexual assault, an abandoned baby, undocumented workers, a long-ago murder, and the Covid pandemic are all woven into the well-written story. MECCA was named a Most Anticipated Book for March 2022 by the Los Angeles Times and USA Today; was an Amazon Best Book of March 2022, and received starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly. The Economist sums it up, calling MECCA a "triumphant, polyphonic new novel [in which] the working people behind the glamour of the Golden State are revealed in all their multiplicity, with Ms. Straight's trademark tenderness and humour."

Thanks to Netgalley for an ARC of this book, in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This is group of interlocked stories, that really tie together to make a cohesive novel, focusing on interrelated characters. It focuses on the experience of people of color in California, and is fascinating. It doesn't matter if your families have been in California for generations, or if you're an undocumented immigrant - you're still treated with disrespect and insults - "go back to Mexico."

I have read some complaints about the book, because this is not the author's personal experience, but I don't agree. This is fiction, and numerous authors write fiction that is not autobiographical. After all, people swoon over historical romances, for instance, even though the authors of these books are not actually women involved in romances with 18th century dukes!

This book felt real, and I loved it. I couldn't stop reading, devoured it in a day. The characters rang true, and the setting was beautifully described. I could feel the overpowering heat and the oppressive fear of the fires. The addition of COVID also made this feel more realistic - it wasn't the overwhelming subject of the book, but the reality of COVID clearly influenced everyone's reality (as it did in real life!)

I will definitely be looking for more books by Susan Straight.

This was a very unique and relevant story.
It gave me slight RAZORBLADE TEARS vibes, but overall was a completely different type of book.

This story is set in CA and hops around from different Hispanic residents and displays a glimpse of their daily life. We see the struggles they face, the racial injustices they deal with and the overarching fear of being deported.
The stories were powerful and intriguing. I was excited to see how they all came together through the course fo the book as well.

The ending was frightening and ended on such a cliff hanger. As I was listening to it, it left me scratching my head a bit as I think there are several gaps we as the reader can fill in.
I think this is a powerful story and very educational to see the different perspectives. It really honed in on the overarching presence of hope no matter what your situation.

I will say I am very glad I listened to this book. There were so many foreign words I would not have know how to pronounce and the narrators did an amazing job. I actually tried to listen and read this book simultaneously, but found I enjoyed the audio more.

Susan Straight has a terrific, even passionate, sense of place. This book is especially for those who have lived and loved in southern California. The hot, dry Santa Ana winds are right in these pages. A CHP motorcyclist takes us out on the freeways as he catches speeders in the late night/early morning hours. A sprawling family living hidden in the canyons introduces us to the byways and mysteries there, and to the extreme fire danger that is so much a part of their lives.

As the opening pages acknowledge, sections of the book have appeared elsewhere, and the author artfully strings them together to provide a picture of people who live on the edge and are making it. Though outsiders do not understand, they know who they are and out of which stream of migrants they and their families came. Were their ancestors Native Americans? Early Spanish? Louisiana Blacks? No matter - they are Americans, and no ICE can tell them different.

As you can tell, I really enjoyed these stories, despite some difficulty. Many stories put together mean a large cast of people, and I couldn't always keep track of who was speaking and whether I had met them before. Nevertheless I can't wait to hear more about what happened to Manny.