Music for comfort and beauty amidst the suffering – the life of Johann Sebastian Bach (Leipzig, Germany; 1726 – 1750): What role does music play in our lives?

Music as the central theme of The Great Passion drew me to this supreme novel because passion for the arts tends to propel its way into enchanted prose. I had no idea that British writer James Runcie’s 11^th historical novel was as much about faith as it is about art.

The thing is you don’t have to subscribe to Bach’s deeply held religious beliefs, or any other Protestant or Christian denominations, to appreciate what Runcie has achieved. I say that with confidence since I’m not of the Christian faith, nor someone who’s studied the scriptures. Nor, one of an amazing number of Bach scholars who’ve devoted their lives to understanding one of the greatest classical composers in history and the meaning of his masterworks. Nor a musicologist or musician well-versed in music terminology – cantata, courante, andante, toccata, fugue, allemande – and can play the “King and Queen of instruments,” the organ, or the harpsichord, oboe, viola, violin, even the recorder. Because “the trick is to give particular voice to universal feelings,” Bach says to his prized thirteen-year-old, soprano singing student Stefan at the all-boys boarding Latin music school St. Thomas, as Musical Director (Cantor) in the “devout town” of Leipzig, Germany in the first half of the 18^th century.

By focusing on a specific piece of classical “sacred music” – The Passion According to St Matthew introduced to the parishioners at the St. Thomas Church on Good Friday, April 11, 1727 – The Great Passion is more universal than that. It’s meant to show how “love and sorrow came together in the same word, passion.” It’s more about “how we live” than how “we may travel through the shadow of death.” And it’s certainly about how music can “console us through our desolation, and leave our hearts with unexpected joy.”

In posing provocative philosophical and existential questions, the novel asks universal questions about the meaning and purpose of a well-lived life. “How can our time on earth be enjoyed”? Do we have to suffer to appreciate “bliss” even from a secular perspective? Of course, there’s many “moments of grace” that are religious, specifically Bach’s religion Lutheranism, with its roots going back to the 1500s to when Martin Luther questioned Catholicism and set off the Protestant Reformation.

To get a feel for how you can “give sorrow such beauty” in music (which Runcie does novelistically), here’s a seven minute clip of the 3 to 3 ½ hours long performance of St Matthew Passion, considered one of the greatest pieces of sacral music played during Holy Week:

Runcie explores both the music and the man.

Johann Sebastian Bach/Sebastian was highly disciplined, hot tempered, and exultant about his life’s purpose: “to give our lives to our music” aimed at “striving for a defining beauty.” His music resonates with his sorrow over the death of his first wife, Maria Barbara, and raw grief losing his three-year-old daughter Etta.

He’s not the only character burdened by grief. Stefan recently lost his mother. His organ-making father sent him away from his home in Freiberg for a year telling him that to make organs he must first learn what it feels like to play one. But it’s his singing voice that endears him to Sebastian. A voice that at his age could break at any time. The fragility of life is a tenderhearted theme, seen in Stefan’s friendship with Bach’s oldest daughter Catharina, a “lonely beauty” with a passion for butterfly collecting. Grief is a bond they share, both mourning the loss of their mothers.

When the novel opens in 1726, Bach is the father of eight children: four from his first marriage and four from his second to Anna Magdalena, as beautiful and saintly as her name implies. Immensely devoted to Bach, sixteen years older, caring for and loving so many children at age twenty-four. By the time the novel ends in 1750, he’s fathered more children than probably anyone you’ve known. Which makes Anna a fascinating woman, who says, “If a house has enough love, there’s always space.” Miserably unhappy Stefan doesn’t have any space for himself nor does he feel he belongs at the school. A victim of tremendous bullying on account of his red-hair and jealousy by other students that the Cantor now favors him. “My wife will look after you,” Bach assures Stefan, thus welcoming him into their hectic “music-making,” playing, and singing family.

Readers may be surprised how different this novel is from Runcie’s six The Grantchester Mysteries adapted into PBS’s Grantchester series, now in its 7^th season, set in a cozy 1950s English village outside Cambridge where the author lives. Googling, you’ll learn Runcie’s father was the Archbishop of Canterbury, so it’s not a surprise his fictional detective Sydney Chambers is a member of the clergy. Moreover, that he’d bring so much insight, knowledge, and passion into composing this ambitious novel.

The Great Passion opens when Stefan, our narrator, is now thirty-seven. “There are gaps of time into which we sometimes fall, when the pattern of our days is suspended,” he intimately opens his story that tells Bach’s story. Reflecting on what it was like to be one of “the first to sing Bach’s music” and to be swept up into the world of JSB, his is a coming-of-age story learning how to live with grief and go on with your life over time. “Time is the best preacher.”

Time as a theme is ever-present, as Stefan and the reader know his time with the Bach family is predetermined. Everyone feels the anxiety and urgency of time as the master’s deadline approaches for playing his masterpiece on the most sacred day in Christianity. Stefan also struggles with learning how to “sing out into the spaces” – “like a breeze towards the altar; a blessing, a scent of summer, the flow of a river, God’s grace.”

There’s so much grace and sensitivity in the pages. Until you reach page 200. For a few pages, your senses are abruptly interrupted with a shocking event that takes place in the town. Your first reaction, at least mine was: Why is this here? The fact that it bursts into the story sent me looking for an explanation. Runcie understands not all is beatific in this town, but doesn’t dwell on the controversy: anti-Semitism. He could have chosen an earlier sacral piece of Bach’s music St John Passion, also played during the holiest week in the Christian faith, engendering greater angst.

Arising from Bach’s staying true to Martin Luther’s scriptural faith written in the lyrics – centuries-old beliefs that the Jewish people are responsible for the death of Jesus Christ. The novel also suggests what others believe. That Bach felt everyone was responsible for the pain, suffering, and sacrifice, including Lutherans. (Some examples discussing the controversy from both sides: 1, 2, 3, and 4).

Runcie, though, focuses on Bach’s passion for people working together to create something far better than any single person could. The lofty message is we’re all in this thing called life together. Interestingly too is that Bach didn’t write the controversial lyrics. His friend, a famous “flamboyant” (as in wore a “lilac coat”) German poet who called himself Picander, wrote the “libretto” to Bach’s music exemplifying how “loss was part of love.”

No denying there’s a great deal of religious fervor to digest and reflect upon. But there’s also the secular, universal pursuit of the “great examination of what it means to be alive.”

Lorraine

The ghostwriter who hooked millions of boys on reading (early 1900s–1975; Northern Ontario, Canada and Springfield, Massachusetts): How good a sleuth are you?

Did you detect the picture hanging on the wall, spying through the window of the nostalgic cover art of the Ghost of the Hardy Boys, is the cover of the first book in the original mystery series published in 1927, The Tower Treasure? In the spirit of anonymity, the identity of the good sleuth who clued me in shall remain a secret.

Talk about secrets! It took fifty years for “the writer behind the world’s most famous boy detectives” to reveal his identity – Leslie McFarlane aka Franklin W. Dixon – and for most of us another fifty years with the publication of this entertaining and enlightening memoir. First published in 1976, a year before the Canadian ghostwriter died, for most of us it’s likely these are brand new revelations about an indelible slice of Americana.

If you were a Nancy Drew reader, like I was, you too will find the memoir fascinating as both series (and The Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift, Rover Boys, Dana Girls series) were the brainchild of the “sales genius” behind “one of the great merchandising ideas in the history of American publishing”: Edward Stratemeyer. Who? “A Henry Ford for fiction for boys and girls.” Founder of Stratemeyer’s Syndicate. Creator of 800 juvenile books.

Staying within Stratemeyer’s outlines – titles, characters, mystery – McFarlane “hammered out” the original 21 volumes of The Hardy Boys from 1927 to 1947, published by Grosset & Dunlap. His memoir is a treasure trove of early-19^th century journalism, and one man’s control and transformation of the children’s book market.

Marilyn S. Greenwald, journalism professor at Ohio University and 2017 author of The Secret of the Hardy Boys: Leslie McFarlane and the Stratemeyer Syndicate, writes in her Introduction that The Hardy Boys were one of the “most enduring series in the history of young-adult literature.” (For a complete list see: https://hardyboys.us/hbos.htm.)

Via today’s sleuthing tool, you can learn that McFarlane’s fictional series in Bayport, Long Island, New York was “similar” to his hometown in Baileyville, northern Ontario. Ripe for two made-up boy sleuths – Joe and Frank Hardy, whose father Fenton was akin to Sherlock Holmes – yet adventures in some real places like Barmet Bay, Lakeshore Road, and cliffs. “How does one explain the subtle, magnetic attraction of one’s native land?”

Early on, you’ll read about the circumstances that led to McFarlane’s writing the first three Hardy Boys books. Published at the same time, the clever marketing “breeder” strategy meant the reader was apprised in book one that The House on the Cliff and The Secret of the Old Mill were awaiting. Circling back to the books later, he writes more about the books in the series. A technique he repeats when discussing the remote cabin in the Ontario woods where he wrote all the books after circling back home from America as a reporter for the Springfield Republican.

As of 1975, McFarlane tells us 11 million copies of his books were sold. But he never received name recognition for them, part of his benefactor’s strategy to be in command. Spinning a yarn about Ernest Hemingway, with whom he worked when the two were reporters for the Toronto Star, he warm-heartedly lets us know how he felt about anonymity. “No doubt a Nobel Prize winner feels pretty good when he learns he’s made it, but he can’t feel any more elated than a novice writer who sees his name in print.”

There’s no anger or resentment in McFarlene’s reflections. A “wordsmith” who admired great literature and “fine writing,” he doesn’t feel betrayed by Stratemeyer who paid him a pittance and became a millionaire. The chapter like “A Book is a Book is a Buck” shows he tells it like it was: these books weren’t the “Better Stuff” he aspired to but the reason he was able to eke out a living. “One should be thankful for whatever gift, no matter how small.”

Still wanting to incorporate some “embroidery” into his writing, “opting for Quality,” he created a character fans loved: Aunt Gertrude, his father’s sister. He also understood “you couldn’t go wrong by larding the action with a little funny stuff.” Years later his daughter says he “hated” the books, but in his telling he takes a pragmatic and generous tone.

“Honesty is everything,” the memoirist says, one of the life lessons he sought to instill. Another, a can-do spirit that nothing’s outside of a young person’s reach with enough “patience,” “luck,” and “ability.”

Nostalgia draws you to the memoir. To more “wholesome” times when our youth weren’t exposed to and victims of all the ills of modern society. As seen in his delightful writing and old-fashioned prose like “lads,” “rascals,” “scoundrels, “belly-buster,” “knee-slapper,” “tiddlywinks,” “buffooneries,” “gosh,” and “golly.”

McFarlane’s “comic itch” can be attributed to growing up on silent era comedians like Charlie Chaplain and W. C. Fields, vaudeville, and minstrel shows. That they included “blackface comedians from the American stage” like Amos and Andy brings us to bad nostalgia. Which opens up Pandora’s Box resonating the same racial and ethnic stereotyping complaints in children’s literature still seen today. Numerous websites discuss the racist, anti-Semitic, sexist, and derogatory language in the original series.

When Canadian journalist Bob Stall asks him how he felt about his books being “completely rewritten” (beginning in 1959), McFarlane knows they “aren’t the same books” (see here and here). He doesn’t say anything about the offensive prose. Rather, he discusses how “the old books were written for a literate generation,” pre-technology when kids had more time to entertain themselves, including reading versus the dumbing down of makeovers.

How to approach these sensitive issues in reviewing this charming memoir? Look for evidence of inflammatory language based on what’s written in the memoir. This is not a review, then, of the language of the actual Hardy Boys books.

Here’s what I found: McFarlane lived near mining camps and railway towns that attracted immigrants: “Finns, Ukrainians, Russians, Italians, Poles, and French-Canadians.” When he says immigrants need to learn English if they don’t want to be “an object of mirth,” he’s speaking to the importance of a key aspect to assimilation versus anti-immigrant sentiment viewing immigrants as objects of hatred and violence. When you come upon the word Swastika, your hairs stand up until you realize that’s actually the name of a real town in Canada. Why hasn’t the name been changed? When he says, “No popular magazine editor would go for a Good Guy who wasn’t a white man,” it’s a disturbing commentary but historically realistic. The most egregious depictions were his comments on dialogue excerpts a la Keystone Cops poking fun at the police. Not at all funny today, dangerous, though his intention was to show young people that it’s okay to question authority. These days, how we speak about law enforcement necessitates handling with care. 

McFarlane’s lamentations on the loss of reams of defunct newspapers, weeklies, and magazines take center stage. He’s nostalgic for the days when you could pick up pulp fiction for a nickel or a dime.

“No ghost is irreplaceable,” he writes. You have to wonder if that’s true since Leslie McFarlane brought his small town boy’s sense of wonderment, adventure, humor, and attachment to a place from his early-20^th century childhood into his books.

To Bob Stall, he says about his extensively remade mysteries: “Even a ghost has feelings.”

Lorraine

Test your investigative skills. Clue: Focus on the Jurors (South Miami, Florida; 2011 & 2001): Ready for jury duty from the comfort of your home? Ready to see how scrupulous you are as a reader? Ready to “play the game”?

Seeking justice is not a game of course. It’s a man’s life we’re talking about. In this case Gabriel Soto’s, accused of raping and murdering Melina Mora two years before the trial is about to begin. But as Robin Peguero, former homicide prosecutor in Miami shows us – strategically, methodically, brilliantly – a game is afoot inside and outside the courtroom. This supposed hall of justice is situated in the highly diverse multiethnic, multicultural community of South Miami. We know the criminal justice system is broken when it comes to people of color, but maybe not as pervasive and bungling.

Dear Reader: you’re part of the game. You don’t realize you’re being played until you reach the if-you-can-figure-out-the-ending. Assume nothing. Pay close attention. Take notes if you have to, as this literary game is awfully clever, distracting, and deceptive. “Deception is entirely constitutional.” Riveting too, so you’ll want to compare your verdict with the jury’s.

Peguero is laser-focused on racial and ethnic prejudices and biases woven into the backstories of jurors, defendant, victim, witnesses, lawyers, detectives, and law enforcement officers. You’ll be assessing the credibility of everyone, including counsel defending their clients: Sandy Grunwald, arguing for the State of Florida and victim Melina Mora; Johnny Whipple, public defender, going to bat for Gabriela Soto to save him from a miserable fate. Mora and Soto are both Latinos. She from Columbia, he Cuban.

A crash course of how hard it would be to be one of the jurors on a murder trial. The key witness initially identified Soto as a black man she saw arguing with a beautiful young woman outside a bar at night. Later, she changes her testimony to a lighter skinned Cuban man. Mistaken identity? Bad memory? Prejudice?

Expect characters to be tainted by conflicts-of-interests the reader concludes or perceives, to include Sandy’s Lead Detective; the Chief Medical Examiner; influence of big money and ambitions; and the reporter inside the court Dominico Santos, who cares about the “fourth estate” but cares more about Sandy, his girlfriend. She acutely aware of conveying the proper female image, drummed into her head by her father the Honorable Jack Grunwald.

Write What You Know. A literary mantra and compelling reason With Prejudice is an extremely well-conceived, hard-hitting thriller. Peguero’s credentials displayed in his razor-sharp prose make him the only person whose credibility we don’t question. Like Sandy, he’s had seven years of experience prosecuting murder cases, so he’s turned from “storytelling to jurors” to storytelling about jurors. He’s also been the speechwriter for presidential candidate Senator Amy Klobuchar, wrote for the Harvard Law Review, and the Miami Herald. Currently, he serves as a legal advisor to Congress on domestic terrorism. At the heart of it all, is his father’s experience as a victim of racial profiling. “I’m angry,” he writes. “I am angry at a system – and maybe at myself – for thinking that in dressing myself up in Harvard-degrees, in sweaters and collared shirts, in affectations of the powerful, that I have rendered myself un-arrestable.”

This stellar crime novel allows for a healthy and pointed way for the author to funnel his indignation at systemic racism in the legal system and society as a whole. It’s impossible not to be moved by what you’ll read when you get an insider’s stinging view of one case. Fictional, yet inspired by realities.

“You don’t pick a jury. You’re left with a jury,” Sandy tells her intern. So by the time “voir dire” – a legal term for jury selection that’s as much art and psychology as anything else – is completed, you’re left with a “race to the bottom” selecting jurors who aren’t “too informed.”

“Doublespeak” is cited, applying even to the title. With prejudice is also a legal term that means a judge can make a decision that’s binding, versus a decision without prejudice that can be changed. You’ll learn other legal terms not defined but inferred such as the Babson Challenge, Rape Shield Rule, Richardson violation, Section 1983.

You’ll also get a primer on the most respectful way to characterize someone of Latin ethnicity. For instance, the victim is first described as Hispanic, while later more appropriately as Columbian. Referring to someone by their country of origin shows greater respect for a person’s identity, if we have to label people at all. She could also be described as Latina. The author makes the point that Hispanic refers to someone from the US, Latino to someone from a Latin American country. The two are typically used interchangeably.

Again, Peguero’s personal story makes him a credible source. Apparently, when he was younger he identified himself as “Black and Hispanic;” today he calls himself “Afro-Latino” of Dominican and Ecuadorian heritage. The specificity also implies that not all people from the Dominican Republic are black, nor prefer to be called black. The message is: be conscious of stereotyping people, which unconsciously reveals our own prejudice, lack of understanding, or consideration.

The uphill battle of proving sexual assault in a rape case is a key factor in the jury’s decision. It doesn’t help that Melina was head-turning attractive and a free-spirit with men, so the case is ready-made for assuming consensual sex. Until the first unexpected game-changing twist on the evening before the trial starts, bombshell evidence indicating Soto is gay. So he couldn’t possibly have committed the crime, his counsel argues. Could he be bisexual? Is narrow-mindedness a form of prejudice?

Unlike Peguero, Sandy is white. A liberal Democrat versus her Republican counterpart Whittle. Which is why on page six Sandy also tells her intern: “Honestly, I could tell you the verdict from the moment the six of them are selected . . . I’d only need to ask one question: Who did you vote for in the last election?”

Catch something that throws you off? Not the politics, but the number 6? Why only six jurors, with an alternate, when most juries require twelve? Googling, you’ll learn Florida is one of very few states where you only need half the model. Representative/diverse enough?

Gender matters too. Sandy prefers male jurors. The older, the more conservative, the better. Men without hearts not women who are too soft. Her goal: win. “Nothing is more important to her than her ambition.”

The evidence is limited: two strands of the victim’s hair; the creepy claim of a body when only some bones were found; and another witness who commented on Soto’s isolated, bare-bone conditions living on the same out-of-the-way farm, noticing a light and hearing screaming inside the tiny quarters of a loner. Is it a crime to live “off the grid”? Couple that with law enforcement conducting a shabby investigation based on assumptions and you’re off with planting the seeds of doubt that should influence a jury’s decision.

“The power of relatability” also matters. Who do you think the jury will believe? Ironically, the passionate male public defender or the cool “restraint” of the prosecutor?

To simulate how hard it is to be on a jury with a lot to pay attention to and weed out, the novel is loaded with backstories that transition abruptly, throwing the reader off kilter. Intentionally. An effective technique that may cause you to miss the clues that will affect your verdict.

Lorraine

Filling a void in a world aching for greater compassion (Cincinnati, Ohio; “Then” and “Now”): The first thing to know about Jessica Strawser’s The Next Thing You Know is you’ll wish it never ends. It reads like a warm hug from a dear friend whose gift is grace, compassion, and brave, aching love.

Not what you expected. Either because you thought you’d be too raw to read it during this Age of Grief, or hesitated not knowing what an “end-of-life doula” does, assuming it was awfully depressing. Don’t hesitate, as I did at first. Run to it, as it might be exactly the kind of friend you’re sorely in need of right now. A friend who stretches and stretches out their hand to show and remind you to celebrate all that makes life precious, meaningful, radiant, giving us strength in too much darkness.

Two female “death doulas” who’ve found their purpose and a compelling new client tell this emotionally daring story that hits a nerve. They represent a fairly new movement in holistic health care: the “Death Positive Movement.” Nova, the doula protagonist, “sparkles” like her name; her partner Kelly founded Parting Your Way. Emphasis on YOUR. Their purpose is to help terminally ill clients (not patients as their support is non-medical) find “peace of mind” navigating the mind-boggling, enormously stressful position they find themselves in – be it for themselves, a parent, or significant other.

As Kelly explains to Mason, the new client who walks onto the cozy porch of an enterprise she’s put her heart and soul into, their support services include “physical” and “financial” considerations and “the big three: mental, emotional, spiritual.” The doula, then, serves as the “point person” to sensitively guide a client in the “letting go of pain, accepting the outcome they’re facing, seeking forgiveness – many people have unresolved feelings and regrets they need to address before they can come to terms.” 

Mason is seeking services for himself. The same age as Nova, thirty-six, too young to die. He too doesn’t know what a death midwife does, a controversial term in the literature as midwife implies birth. The birth doula movement goes back to the 1960s; the end-of-life movement began in the early 2000s and judging by the number of national and international associations and groups is surging. (Examples: National End-of-Life Doula Movement Alliance, NEDA; International End-of-Life Doula Association, INELDA; and Doulagivers, the group the author cites in her Acknowledgements.) These groups use midwife to reflect both birth and death are about providing a “safe, sacred place.”

Mason isn’t your ordinary client, and it’s not just his age. A singer-songwriter-musician who believes his sole purpose in life is playing the guitar. Not just any guitar, but his “prized” Gibson Montana Hummingbird made of mahogany and Sitka woods known in the trade as “The Bird.”

Mason loves being on the road, rather than coming home. He loves the process so much he’s not in a rush for fame. How famous is he? You’ll wonder, and will eventually find out. The most he reveals to Kelly and Nova when he meets them is that he’s come to “make peace with the inevitable.” They/we do not know what his diagnosis is, nor how much time he has left on earth. Later, he shares a bit more, not nearly enough, but it has something to do with his right hand preventing him from playing the guitar.

What is Mason suffering from? A progressive, debilitating neurological disease? Something else? (Initially, I thought bone cancer.) The reader imagines all sorts of possibilities. We narrow them down; we think we know. The thing is: no one really knows. Everyone has made assumptions. A mystery that keeps the reader intrigued. But not as much as the relationship developing between Nora and her new client.

Since the philosophy of Parting Your Way is to reduce the extraordinary pressure someone feels when they’re told their life is ending, Kelly and Nora don’t pressure him to fill out the forms other clients do. Kelly goes so far as to reassure him that no one expects he’ll need the range of services they offer, rather view them as a “menu” to choose from. One thing Kelly knows is that she’s not the right doula to for him, coming from the elder care industry. Nova is better equipped: a “premature death specialist.”

What type of person thinks they can be fully there, emotionally available, 24/7 if need be, for preparing clients to die? How to also be available for yourself? In Kelly’s situation, stay the “mama bear” for Willow, her fifth-grader and only daughter who’s never known her father. Answer: People with a huge well of compassion. When does that well run dry?

How to maintain boundaries if you care about your client’s holistic well-being? What if you can’t? Don’t? What are the repercussions? Answer: Depends on whether the doula is Kelly or Nova. Nova is not an open-book, like Mason. Kelly is a follow-the-book kind of person running a business in a “new, untested field.” Either way, serious consequences happen in a field laden with conflicts-of-interest: privacy issues; stepping on medical, family, financial, legal toes; and ethical concerns.

Nova joined the practice a year ago. She and Kelly became fast friends like family. A threesome with Willow, an inquisitive kid who instantly connected with Nova, as she’s more fun, freer than her Mom whose balancing a lot. Nova is remarkably selfless and willing to be there for Mason at all hours. What she’s trying hard to balance is gaining and keeping his trust while finding out what the nature of his condition is and what he’s facing. From the moment they met, they seem to have a Zen-like quality relatedness, fitting given the emotionality of what doulas do extends into the mystical realm. There’s an aura circling them, which is why it seems Strawser introduces us to “kirlian photography” and the belief that pictures can show an “organism’s soul” or “aura.”

Set in Cincinnati, where the author lives, the romantic cover is the tip-off to what’s emotionally in store. Stawser has written four other novels; is a contributor to the NY Times “Modern Love” column; and is Editor-at-Large at Writer’s Digest – so she knows how to write about love, relationships, and the secrets people keep from each other that pull at our heartstrings. This is one of those novels that sticks with you. It makes you feel so-good yet you’ll cry a good cry. The kind of cry you’re grateful for having. 

Writing a novel around death is a gutsy thing to do these grieving days. That Strawser pulls it off so exceptionally/emotionally well attests to a few things she has up her literary/romantic/mysterious sleeve.

Lorraine

The dark underbelly of the “The Golden State” (Riverside, Southern California; present and past): “Valencias or oranges?” Only a citrus fruit-picker, or a writer was asks what seems like a simple question knows it’s loaded with history.

Perhaps only a writer like award-winning Susan Straight, Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at UC-Riverside, born in and still lives and works in Riverside, Southern California in the Coachella Valley south of San Bernardino, could write such a razor-sharp novel (her ninth), Mecca that beams a spotlight on the “invisible people,” marginalized multiracial and multiethnic people of color, whose centuries-old history reflects America’s agricultural economic engine more than any other state. Only someone who cares deeply about this richly diverse part of the country, also more than any other state, could write this hard-hitting novel about people who’ve largely been ignored others “wanted us to forget.” Straight doesn’t. “The future always looks good in the golden land, because no one remembers the past,” Straight wrote in her 2019 memoir, In the Country of Women.

Mecca is not, though, just about one place in America. Its targeted themes are universal: racism, hatred, violence, abuse, victimization, and oppression – economic, social, and cultural. Along with highlighting the critical importance of history, family, community, and connectedness.

Like the heat blazing in this mostly desert terrain, temperatures soaring 120 degrees for days, Straight’s characters “came from people who worked the fields” toiling, sweating. Mecca is aflame. Hot, angry, fierce like the Santa Anna winds that roar mightily across the desert and the Salton Sea, a toxic brew.

Much like Straight’s academic title that speaks to the scholarly esteem she holds, Mecca, deserves to be held in high esteem literary-wise. That doesn’t mean all the prose is enchanted. To be utterly authentic, many marginalized characters spew embitterment, resentful of their uphill plight in life, haunted and burdened by the racist treatment of their ancestors. Their words not nearly as cringe-worthy as the white contemptuous characters, who utter words that are loathsome, debasing, intensified by MAGA attitudes. An ambitious novel spanning time.

The darkness is starkly contrasted against the beauty of the landscape, its mountains, valleys, and canyons. Hope among the ruins.

The dedication stirs:

“Truly this book is in memory of my brother, Jeff. When confronted with hatred or violence, he used to say: I don’t get that station, man. His inner radio was all about oranges, dogs, and trucks. We always made up life on our own.”

“Inner radio.” What a gorgeous way to think about the voices of people who are not spouting this ugly stuff. Suffused in some of the characters’ rage and despair are do-gooders and elders who hang onto to a more spiritual place. Mecca is a real town, but it’s also a word that conveys a religious pilgrimage seeking awakening and peace.

The protagonist is a do-gooder of the highest sort: Johnny Frigas, a late thirties policeman with the California Highway Patrol. If only the worst racial slur he encounters is Fritos. Made more disturbing since he risks his life policing the congested highways and cliffhanging roads and his dignity every time he pulls over a white driver full of road rage and racial animus.

Johnny calls himself a “moreno,” referring to the dark color of his skin, his Mexican and Native American heritage. His grandmother was from one of the indigenous peoples in California, the Cahuilla Indians from the Torres Martinez reservation in Thermal. California is also the state with the greatest number of indigenous tribes, none likely familiar. Johnny and his father still believe they’re one of the “lucky” ones, still living in a row of “little wooden houses” that are more like “shacks” in the Anza hills on a ranch, where he was once an orange picker too (and cattle driver), while others like them live in worse conditions in migrant camps and trailers.

The author wants us to know that the earliest settlers to SoCal were these indigenous tribes and Mexicans, though not treated as if they belong. Mexican Americans first arrived when Mexico lost a significant portion of its land to the US during the Mexican-American war of 1946-1948. Hardships and sacrifices also toughened and strengthened.

Even when one of the characters is irate, she reminds herself: “It had to be one of the most beautiful places in the world. A gorgeous series of layers and colors – the base of golden sand and white dunes, the silver and green ghost trees and smoke trees floating like strange baby’s breath, the spears of white yucca, and the green creosote bushes.”

Mecca, then, is character-driven. In some ways, it reads like a novel in stories. Stories that may take a while, given the novel runs 370 pages, to recognize they’re tied to one another. Connected to three main characters: Johnny, Ximena, and Matelasse. Once you realize the stories of other characters and their big, extended families are related, the reading and messaging becomes clear.

The diversity of Mecca characters reflects Susan Straight’s diverse family. She too connected, so strongly it’s hard to imagine anyone else writing it as vividly, honestly, brutally, and passionately.

Next up is Ximena. She also has a job no one wants: cleaning up after rich, white women who elect to have facial surgery at a fancy medical “spa,” where they toss around their unpleasant messes and leave something behind that has long-term consequences for her, like Johnny’s newbie days fresh out of the police academy also stumbling upon something that changed his life. We meet up with her again, different job but no less subservient. Fidelia, often by her side, is one of her cousins, struggling too, she bringing out an immigrant’s determination to learn English while speaking Spanish and Mixtec, a language of the “Middle American Indian from northern Mexico to Nicaragua.”

Johnny and Matelasse are single for different reasons. He from a traumatic incident introduced early on that unfolds so we see its impact. Unlike his tight group of friends, all married, some with children, whose stories are also told. Matelasse, part French as her grandmother was a slave in Louisiana, her mother still picking oranges, is a single mother left to count the plastic baggies for the lunches of her boys while working as an ICU nurse when we meet her.

These characters often come to us in chapters or bylines named for real towns, roads, and locations – Fuego Canyon, Bee Canyon, Coachella, Anza Crossing, Route 66 and Cajon Pass. As a literary technique, they serve to help us imagine Johnny riding his Harley on those highways and byways he knows so well, presumably like the author. They also contribute to the sense of connectedness rooted to a place and communities who do NOT turn their backs on each other.

The sizzling heat, not just in the vitriol and abuse, is thirst-wise, echoing the severe drought and climate change out West. Some stories cleverly bring out the need for ice to cool people down as well as ICE illegal immigrants are hiding from. ICE agents are so ferociously blinded in one story they dare to cross into a “sovereign nation.” Most, though, are characters born in America, citizens who deserve the same human rights but don’t get them.

In her memoir, Susan Straight tells us James Baldwin was her “teacher and mentor.” If only he could read the powerful ending, he’d be cheering along with us for those who refused to give in.

Lorraine