I wanted to love this book. Sadly, I didn't. The writing is tight and compelling - the author is a master of "show-don't tell". However, I felt that the story could have been several short stories and been more successful. It might have benefited from a little more "tell".

It seemed to me that the characters were being watched from a distance and I had no real sense of their inner emotions. I would have loved to know more of the characters' feelings rather than working hard to intuit them from dialogue and scenes. The book was clever but the story did not move me. That surprised me since the subject matter of immigrants living in California is a topic of great interest to me.

The author certainly paints a vivid picture of the landscape and lives of the peoples who live in southern California. Theirs is not an easy life, but rather one mired in family history and culture.
Her mastery of the language and nuances of the dialects spoken is prodigious.
While I found many of the characters hard to familiarize myself with, others were completely real and haunting in their visceral struggle to survive and flourish.
Highly recommended

Quite honestly, I'm not quite sure what to think of this book. I found much of it quite interesting as I believe most of it was truly reflective of what these different ethnicities have dealt with throughout their lives. There were a lot of characters and by the end I was having a hard time keeping them all straight in my head. I thiought the book was set up a bit strangely discussing mainly one character for the first third of the book and then trying to tie a bunch of others and their individual stories in. I personally was not a fan of the way the book ended and as far as I am concerned nothing is worse than when you dislike the ending to either a book or a movie.

“Mecca” started off strong with the story of Johnny Frías, a highway patrol officer in California. His story caught my attention from the racism he faced to the events of his life twenty years before. Then I slowly began getting overwhelmed with dialogue and how each character fit with the ones before. I soon had to force myself to continue. The concept and characters were great it was just too much, too many or just too epic for me.
Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for providing the ARC in exchange for an honest review. #Mecca #NetGalley @fsgbooks

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 loved this skillful and audacious book. It is about the true locals of Southern California — the Latino and indigenous people who struggle to survive in a hostile white culture.

The book is sort of like a kaleidoscope, in that we follow many different characters as their stories intersect and affect one another. There’s the policeman who is plagued by guilt over an accidental murder decades earlier. There’s the resort maid, scarred from the atrocities she experienced crossing the border, who finds a baby in a room after the guest has left. There’s a white trashy woman who has ended up with a lot of money, who shows us that race and class are not always the same. The mother whose son is killed by cops when he is innocent.

These are the stories we read about in the paper, but given an individual (and heart-breaking) face. We are reminded of how recent (and artificial) the US/Mexico border is.. We see a different side of California Indians besides casino operators.

Most of all, this is a novel about community, and how strong and beautiful the brown (and mixed) one is, despite centuries of injustice and prejudice.

Jumping around between characters all the time was a little hard for me as a reader. However, I can see that it was very effective, in that we got the feeling of the community (loose as it might have been) itself responding, evolving.

I admire the author’s brutal honesty, insights into human character, and deep knowledge of the area’s ethnic history. Highly recommended.

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.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for providing the ARC in exchange for an honest review. #Mecca #NetGalley @fsgbooks

Wonderfully interesting characters and a terrific vision of place (California) and time (the present, including the pandemic, but also the history that made the characters who they are). A stunning beginning, but the ending was a bit disappointing (the storylines were all woven together but then everything seemed to stop abruptly). I was left wishing I could spend more time with the characters, though. A story of race, class, gender, family, climate, and more--much to appreciate.

’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.


Pub Date: 15 Mar 2022

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with an eARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review!

While well-written and heart-grabbing, this book would’ve worked much better as a collection of short stories rather than interconnected storylines (that were more planetary than intertwined, each one orbiting around a stationary entity, Johnny). The chapters were too long, the characters were given uneven development, and the writing style sometimes made me feel a little lost in it all.

With that being said, this book is incredibly detailed in all of its many facets and, while the ending left much to be imagined and the characters seemed like they didn’t want the reader to fully get to know them, the California of this novel was rich in description and the depiction of the realities of living in today’s western society was generally well-done. The writing style generally was not my favourite however, I have to give kudos to the detail-oriented mind of this author, they were meticulous in picture painting via words.

All in all, this was a good book that didn’t quite hit the mark for me but also didn’t leave me wishing that I never read it, if that makes sense!

3/5

A tough book to read. A very different style and horrific events, yet so compelling that I couldn't put this book down. Hearing about some of the injustices and atrocities experienced by immigrants, particularly Mexican immigrants or people who "look" like they might have come from Mexico is one thing. Living through the events with them is another. A powerful, graphic yet important novel that, fittingly, does not end with a conclusion as we know it. This situation is on-going and events such as depicted in this novel will continue to happen unless more of us wake up to the oppressive circumstances that people have to live with. Only fault would be that I don't speak Spanish very well, just a bit, and I would have love some way of the Spanish phrases being made clearer to me. I had to guess at what was being said in many cases. I was given an ARC to read by NetGalley and this review is my honest evaluation of this book.

Ok, so, thank you NetGalley for this advanced reader copy of Mecca.

This is going to be an unpopular opinion…but I feel that I owe it because I was granted this book before being released.

This book was not at all what I thought it was going to be. It is set in Southern California, where I grew up…however, it was a book about illegal and legal immigrants living in California. The problem that I had with the book was that it was extremely choppy. I would be reading along, getting to the next “chapter” and it started off completely differently that I felt…lost.

There were so many characters, that (while I always take notes of books and I did with this one as well) I felt confused as to who they were and how they connected to the story. Although eventually, if you stuck with it, they all knew each other in some way or another. Getting to know the information of how they knew each other was rough.

I am so sorry to this author for my complete (brutal) honesty. I didn’t like this book. This is just one person’s OPINION, and not the gospel for how wonderful this book may be to another. It just wasn’t for me.

…and that is why this review is so short.

I was very intrigued by the book description. However, as hard as I try I cannot get into the story or follow what is happening. I have DNF"d at 50 pages. A lot of extremely short paragraphs and the writing style is just not something I like. There also is a decent amount of Spanish used which is ok, but it is not always explained which also makes the story difficult to follow.

Mecca
By Susan Straight

Race relations and politics in this country are at an all-time low as far as peace, harmony and understanding. This book, which takes place in southern California, deals with illegals crossing the border, mixed race Californians (black, Spanish, indian) being treated as if they were illegals or "wetbacks" instead of citizens, police officers and others being judged by their skin color. In short this is about the incomprehensible cultural divide which is destroying our country from within.

I found the book informative as to how society in southern California, with its inbred prejudices, works – or doesn't work – for all those just trying to make a life there. It is a microcosm of the multitude of issues we are trying to understand and resolve in the best way possible. Unfortunately, what constitutes the best way possible seems to vary widely from person to person. I have to say that I am not sure that Ms. Straight believes America can solve her problems.

As a retired police officer from southern CA I appreciated the walk down memory lane. I also learned so much more about the history of CA, how and why the cities and streets and canyons got their names. Truly fascinating. I appreciated the story too. The author handled important topics of racism and belonging and family - including within the law enforcement community - in a deep but subtle way. The ending seemed abrupt at first but when I sat with the book in its entirety I realized the ending was perfect in the sense that the “stories” depicted within the novel continue to this day and so there is not, nor should there be, a nice, tidy ending.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with the opportunity to read and review this book.

Quite unusual book really takes the long way to MECCA! But many interest stories along the way, why do we do things? Could be todays Headlines!

The description of this book focuses on one of the characters, Johnny Frias. The publisher's description goes to say "connections that unites a vibrant, complex cast of characters in ways they never see coming.. The book does indeed connect a vibrant, complex cast of characters, but that's about all that's connected. The flow of the narrative is disjointed between chapters, so much so that the next chapter reads like a totally new story. The experience of Mexican Americans in Southern California is a tale that needs to be told, but the flow between the stories disrupts the narrative.

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

This wonderful novel brings to life the California of 2020 during the covid pandemic, but more importantly, it shines a light on the interactions of the various cultures there. Johnny Fries is a native Californian police officer, who finds himself targeted by bigots who call him a wetback and other anti-Hispanic slurs. Ironically, Johnny is also targeted by fellow Hispanics for being a police officer. Susan Straight brings to vivid life the various characters, including indigenous people and their interactions with white, black, and hispanic people. This is a powerful novel with characters that touch our hearts.

This book was interesting to anyone who has lived in SoCal as it is a series of stories about mostly Hispanic people Legal and Illegal) and the way they are treated. I did not like the ending as it seemed like she decided she had written enough and just quit without any conclusion.