Mecca By Susan Straight

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.”