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The aftereffect of all these disparate stories juxtaposed in a single epic is remarkable. Its resonance lingers for days after reading.\" --\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eIn the Country of Women\u003c\/i\u003e is a valuable social history and a personal narrative that reads like a love song to America and indomitable women. In inland Southern California, near the desert and the Mexican border, Susan Straight, a self-proclaimed book nerd, and Dwayne Sims, an African American basketball player, started dating in high school. After college, they married and drove to Amherst, Massachusetts, where Straight met her teacher and mentor, James Baldwin, who encouraged her to write. Once back in Riverside, at driveway barbecues and fish fries with the large, close-knit Sims family, Straight--and eventually her three daughters--heard for decades the stories of Dwayne's female ancestors. 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Susan Straight is an essential voice in American writing and in writing of the West.\" --\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eNamed a most anticipated book of March 2022 by the \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times, USA Today,\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eAlta\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e From the National Book Award finalist Susan Straight, \u003ci\u003eMecca\u003c\/i\u003e is a stunning epic tracing the intertwined lives of native Californians fighting for life and land\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eJohnny Frías has California in his blood. A descendant of the state's indigenous people and Mexican settlers, he has Southern California's forgotten towns and canyons in his soul. 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But at twenty, he finds that following in his father's footsteps is no easy road. Living in the East Los Angeles neighborhood of Rio Seco, Darnell and his wife, Brenda, will soon have a new daughter to raise. But Darnell's job at the California Department of Forestry, where he is the lone black firefighter at station 42, is being cut due to a shortage in funding.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e As Darnell moves on to endless nights as a security guard, he dreams of setting up his own landscaping business--but the path he's chosen will lead him to fight the sorts of fires any young black man must face in contemporary America.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e In this moving novel, Susan Straight opens up a whole world . . . where the language is often not lush but hard and rough as concrete (\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e). 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To safeguard their families, the nurses are living in a makeshift RV camp close to the hospital; they share food and cigarettes yet keep their work private. For this is a country in crisis, and they are assisting strangers at the edge of death with infinite tenderness and growing desperation.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e As the nurses struggle with the skyrocketing number of sick patients, Cherisse's daughter goes missing. Grief's friend Johnny Frias, a California Highway Patrol officer, joins the search to find her, and the resulting journey leads to new love and loss, pushing all our characters to their breaking points. 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