Susan Straight’s "Mecca" immerses us in an often-overlooked population eking out an existence in the harsh desert of Southern California where the Santa Ana winds begin and rule the surrounding landscape. Fire follows the winds and only the people whose families have lived there for generations know how to really survive. Most are of Mexican descent, and despite the fact their ancestors settled in the area as early as the 1700’s, long before the white ranchers and cowboys and merchants came, they are told to “go home”, asked if they are U.S. citizens, called wetbacks, or “they could say what the leader of the free world said.”

Straight has a unique gift of being able to move into a culture and bring it to life in her books. A native Californian, she has keen insight into the people who fight the fires, serve the tourists, grow the vegetables for most of the nation, and provide the essential services to keep an economy humming without getting much in return.

There are myriad characters in "Mecca" – enough that I wish I had kept a running list of them as I read to keep them all straight – Johnny, the California Highway Patrol (CHP) motorcycle cop, who learned to stay silent while being insulted by the lead-footed drivers he pulls over; Ximena, the teenage undocumented maid at a spa where women come to surgically transform their bodies and faces; Matelasse, whose mother had “something of everything in her: Spanish and French and Indian and African, trying to raise two boys on her own, counting her cleaning money by sandwiches and Capri Suns.

It's a world I haven’t seen in a novel before, with characters full of complexity, hopes, fears, bitterness, grit and determination, and lots of love. Susan Straight is a master storyteller and pulls you in from the first page. I only wish it had gone on longer – the ending is abrupt and leaves you wondering what’s next for these people you have come to care so much about.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus, and Giroux and Netgalley for the eARC.

I was given a chance to read this book. I gave it a 4 because I didn’t want this book to end I wanted more of this story line.
. I loved learning about all the different characters and how their lives intertwined with one another. Thru high school, a cop shooting, illegals, Covid., this has it all.
Having visited California, this author descriptions of the different places, I visited. The desert and how hot and dry it could be.
This is a great book for a book club and i can’t wait to recommend to my book club and I’m sure it will spark, some great conversations. And I will give it a 5 for them.

It took a few pages to warm up to Mecca. The chapters alternate between loosely connected characters, and we begin with CHP officer Johnny Frias as he patrols up and down the southern California highways. The images painted are gritty, capturing the heat and unrelenting landscape. Mecca's narrative spins around Frias, his friends from childhood, their partners and children and a few orbiting characters. The prose changes as the perspective shifts to female characters. Still gritty, it becomes almost poetic. The narratives so twisty and interlaced I couldn't figure out what was going to happen. I was hooked.

The mothers and fathers, the grandparents and great-grandparents of most of the characters in the book were born in or arrived in California before it was called California. They come from many different cultures. Straight deftly conveys what it's like for them, constantly on the lookout for ICE, struggling to make ends meet, battling language and other cultural barriers. There's an urgency to the story as wildfires, police brutality, the wall, and even covid make appearances.

Mecca is a profound story, engaging, raw, and very current. I loved how the seemingly disparate stories came together. Any book that mentions Buttonwillow (I am from California after all) gets my vote. There is also a lot of humor, a pressure release in the unrelenting narrative. This is my first book by Susan Straight and definitely not the last.

My thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux books for the ARC in exchange for this review.

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. Several stories come together to create this wonderful work by Susan Straight, and they show a diversity that is hidden from the eye and describe some of the presumptions and bigotry present in our society.

The title of this book is apt, since Mecca is both an actual place in California, and a mecca for some, for different reasons. Each character has an intricate, well-told story, some of them connected to each other in ways the characters themselves are often not aware. This makes these life stories, the types so seldom examined, all the more intriguing.

Straight is able to recreate the landscape for us, the beauty of the mountains and canyons, along with the wind, the dryness, and the heat. We are there to witness the struggles of people living in another California (without beaches and mansions), who are often caught between two worlds– their family obligations and traditions, and the outside world’s laws and conventions.

Mecca is wisdom, emotion, and history woven together in a precious, heartbreaking tale that I strongly recommend.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, and Netgalley, for the opportunity to read and review this book, my first experience with this author.

3.5 stars, rounded up
I will admit to being drawn to Mecca because of reviews by authors I enjoy. Attica Locke. Michael Connelly. The book tells the story of Johnny Frias, whose heritage involves generations of Californians. But because he’s Hispanic, he’s treated like he’s just arrived. Straight covers the casual prejudice, the racism. “Okies and Mexicans. They never get it out of their minds. California thinks they’re the most liberal and they fuckin love everybody. But they’ll ask you where you were born just like people do in a small town in Texas. Same old shit.”
Johnny’s not a youngster. He’s been CHP for 20 years. As a rookie, he killed a man up in the Bee Canyon. The one witness, the woman being attacked by the man, disappeared. And Johnny’s been worried he’d be found out ever since.
There are multiple storylines, told from different POVs. They are interconnected revolving around Johnny as the center. Many of the stories involve family - the sacrifices, the loss of a child, but also those that fail at the job. In some ways, this reads more like a series of short stories, a la Elizabeth Strout’s or Tommy Orange’s style.
I haven’t read any of Susan Straight’s books before this. She’s a master at putting you smack dab in the time and place. The Santa Ana winds. The brush fires. The carry out window of a fried chicken joint. ICE demanding ID.
One issue I had is that Straight uses a lot of Spanish words and phrases that are often not easily apparent to those who don’t speak the language.
This is a beautifully written book but a little too disjointed for my taste. And the ending leaves a lot of things up in the air. If you want resolution, this isn’t the book for you.
My thanks to Netgalley and Farrah, Strauss and Giroux for an advance copy of this book.

Thanks to Netgalley and to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the review copy.

Wow! Best book I have read in a long time. I had never read anything by Susan Straight before, but hope she writes more like this one!

This novel has it all. The setting, so meticulously described that you feel like you are there. The character development is outstanding. I love the way the story unfolds, slowly weaving together the disparate pieces. I hope there is a sequel to this epic novel.

I probably would not have chosen this book, had I read the reviews more carefully. In my haste, I mistakenly thought It was going to be a mystery. I spent the first several chapters trying to figure out where the mystery came into play, but by that time I had become mesmerized by her writing. This is a book that begs to be read for a book Club, where each of the characters can be discussed, compared and validated for their struggles. It is Straight's skill that allows the reader to see beyond the poverty, loneliness, constant fear of deportation and perceived hopelessness into their tenacity in holding onto family ties, their love of the land and their shared history.
I would have loved to know what inspired her to choose this topic. (The one drawback to reading a book not completely finished.) Her ability to authentically go between male and female voices contributes to the complexity of the book.

Oh, wow! There is writing and there’s this book. I am out of words to describe the feelings. Who would have thought life could ever be this way for a CHP? Because everything is taken from reality, even fiction.

I highly enjoyed “Mecca.” I can see it winning different awards already!

I loved all of the characters in the book. Each one was vibrant and alive, shaped by their past and doing their very best during the present. I felt like they became my friends and family; I rooted for them. I also loved the writing. Each character’s perspective was enhanced by the precise and descriptive writing. My one hesitation partway through the book is that the narrative incorporated the pandemic. I usually shy away from that topic in books because it’s hard enough to live in it much less spend time reading about it, too. However, I found comfort and solace in the story. It felt nice to have some of my emotions and experiences validated by seeing them in print. I was especially drawn to the impact the pandemic had on nurses and their families. This was such a layered book, too. Besides Covid, the book also focused on poverty, sexual assault, gender, marriage, relationships, identity, and the long and rich history of people from non-European heritage who made America what it is and who continue to shape this country.

This is an admirable work -- and definately an interesting read. The author takes you into a California that many people won't ever encounter and others don't even realize exists.
Some parts of the novel may be difficult to read -- but their inclusion is understandable when the work is looked at as a whole.
This a challenging book - but should definately deserves to be read.

The interconnected stories in Susan Straight’s novel Mecca explores the lives of native Californians living and getting by in and around Mecca, California.

This extraordinary, well crafted epic examines themes of social justice, race, family and identity through the lives of fully developed and believable characters.

I especially loved how each of the stories had their own narrative thread but were linked by the actions of the recurring characters. I can’t really say I disliked the ending to this novel but it did seem rather abrupt and jarring. I wanted more perhaps a sequel?
I loved the characters, the sense of place and the use of interconnecting vignettes in the telling of this story. I unconditionally recommend this book to all adult readers of fiction and especially those who are drawn to a love of California, the lives of its very diverse culture and its history.

Sorry, couldn't get past the Bee Canyon chapter. Lot, and lots, and lots of description. The descriptions are great, but there is no plot, no development. A little hint that maybe he killed somebody and then another 30 pages of description. The scenery might be enough for some readers. Not for me. No interest whatsover in reading any further.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ebook.

Mecca tells the story of California from the perspective of the blue collar natives that built it and sustain it, but most people don't see. These are not the fancy Hollywood types but the indigenous and Mexican people that first settled and whose families stayed. These are the overlooked salt of the earth people.

The story begins with Johnny, his family and friends and branches out to many different characters that he interacts with in his daily life. This includes people who deal with low wage jobs, fires that stretch for miles, violence that comes out of nowhere and is kept secret for decades, the Santa Anna winds and even dealing with the coronavirus.

The writing is humorous, visually adept in painting the desert and canyons and the characters are fairly well developed. You want to like them and their struggles. The author tackles race, history, family and destinies through the injustice, history and glory of California. A good read!

“Mecca” by Susan Straight is a literary novel set in Southern California. It portrays the hard-scrabble lives of a variety of characters of Hispanic, African, and Native American descent, some of whom are newly arrived immigrants, others of whom are from families who arrived in California in the 18th and 19th centuries.

There’s much to admire about the novel. Author Susan Straight certainly knows how to put words on a page (which is why she was a National Book Award finalist). And in “Mecca,” time and time again I found sentences and paragraphs that revealed an extraordinary eye for detail and a wonderful talent for expressing those details originally. “Mecca” is filled with artistry.

Ms. Straight adeptly depicts Southern California: its canyons and arroyos, its eucalyptus trees and tumbleweeds, its unrelenting heat and dryness, its Santa Ana winds, its susceptibility to fire and flood. She’s equally skillful at portraying her characters: the CHP motorcycle patrolman, the nurse and her family struggling through COVID, the basketball prodigy killed by a racist cop when reaching for his phone, the maid at a plastic-surgery clinic who discovers an abandoned baby. Each character has his or her own story to tell and each plays a part in other characters’ stories. Ms. Straight knows the internal language of each character and portrays each one through his or her unique vernacular.

But for me, unfortunately, the novel fails. It’s a long book of many chapters, each one told from a different character’s point of view. Some characters get only one chapter. Some get more than one. Some get more than one but are spaced far apart. What results is a collection of interconnected, slice-of-life stories touching on various incidents (or conditions) told in a quasi-stream-of-consciousness style. I often felt lost

While we’re told a lot about the characters and how they feel, I found it very difficult to identify with any of them. Indeed, to me, it seemed as though, despite all the detail, or maybe because of it, I was purposefully being kept at arm’s length—invited to watch them but not to be involved with them.

And there are so many characters to keep straight, all speaking or thinking in ways that, at times, were difficult to comprehend.

So, while I have a lot of respect for the author’s abilities and the quality of her work, I did not enjoy this novel. And only rarely did “Mecca” succeed in causing me to feel anything.

However, I well recognize that there are others who may feel differently, especially those who love literary novels and those familiar with Southern California and its people. That, along with the artistry so abundantly displayed, is why I’m giving it 3 ½ stars rounded up to 4.

My thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for providing me with a complementary electronic ARC. The above is my independent opinion.

A beautiful intertwined series of stories by National Book Award nominee Susan Straight.
In Mecca, we meet the underside of Southern California, those of the invisible economy, of Indian and or Mexican Descent. The Santa Ana winds are as much of a character in the stories as these indigenous and Mexican descendants fighting to survive in the modern world. The story opens with Johnny Frías, a California Highway Motorcycle patrolman who killed a man raping a young woman many years ago. The woman fled in fear and these actions set off a chain of events that unravel through the story.

Through the eyes of Oaxacan women and a circle of friend leading back generations, we see a whole new side of Southern California and learn of the trials and tribulations that make up the vast majority of the state.A must read for fans of Susan Straight, literature lovers and American History and cultural buffs.
#FarrarStraus&Giroux #NetGalley #Mecca

Mecca is a very detailed, descriptive novel of Californians of Mexican, French, Indian, and American heritage visualizing their struggles through the ages to the present day. It is heartbreaking and heartwarming to read and sympathize and celebrate with the characters and their dilemmas. You must read it to fully understand others' trials and tribulations.

Mecca by Susan Straight is filled with richly developed and diverse characters. With a core of friends and family who develop throughout the narrative, birth, death and the coronavirus all play a part in the plot. Through a series of interlocking episodes their lives and times are brought forward with joy and pathos. the fact most are indigenous and minorities] adds richness due to the additional challenges this fact presents. Truly a great and empathic read !

I'm afraid I finally simply lost patience with this novel, waiting for a story to kick in. I kept pushing myself, until I reached the halfway point, but just couldn't keep going. The writing is good, though, which accounts for my rating.

This one feels like a situation of “ it’s not you, it’s me”. I tried this one several times, skipped ahead to other stories, but l, ultimately, just didn’t connect with this one.

Unfortunately I didnt end up finishing this book. I couldn't connect with the writing style. This was a lot more nature writing forward then I expected, which isn't a genre I can connect with.