Mecca, Susan Straight
Mecca, Susan Straight
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

Mecca

Author: Susan Straight

Narrator: Patricia R. Floyd, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, Frankie Corzo

Unabridged: 12 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 03/15/2022


Synopsis

Johnny 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. He spends his days as a highway patrolman pulling over speeders, ignoring their racist insults, and pushing past the trauma of his rookie year, when he killed a man assaulting a young woman
named Bunny, who ran from the scene, leaving Johnny without a witness. But like the Santa Ana winds that every year bring the risk of fire, Johnny’s moment of action twenty years ago sparked a slow-burning chain of connections that unites a vibrant, complex cast of characters in ways they never see coming.

In Mecca, the celebrated novelist Susan Straight crafts an unforgettable American epic, examining race, history, family, and destiny through the interlocking stories of a group of native Californians all gasping for air. With sensitivity, furor, and a cinematic scope that captures California in all its injustice, history, and glory, she
tells a story of the American West through the eyes of the people who built it—and continue to sustain it. As the stakes get higher and the intertwined characters in Mecca slam against barrier after barrier, they find that when push comes to shove, it’s always better to push back.

About Susan Straight

Susan Straight has published eight novels, including Highwire Moon, Between Heaven and Here, and A Million Nightingales. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the National Magazine Award. She is the recipient of the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement from the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Edgar Award for Best Short Story, the O. Henry Prize, the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her stories and essays have been published in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, Granta, McSweeney's, Black Clock, Harper's, and other journals. Her work has been translated into Spanish, German, French, Arabic, Turkish, Japanese, Romanian, Swedish, and Russian. She is Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside. She was born in Riverside, where she lives with her family.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Michael on March 08, 2025

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......more

Goodreads review by Janet on March 04, 2022

This novel in interrelated stories traces the interwoven lives of working people in the 'other' Southern California--not beaches and premieres, but the one where windy Orange County canyons take us a step back in time, where a Latinx highway patrol cop returns to check on his father and the other el......more

Goodreads review by Ron on March 15, 2022

The wind blows hard and hot through the Santa Ana Canyon in Susan Straight’s new novel, “Mecca.” By highway, this is a realm not far from the glitter of Hollywood and the animatronic joy of Disneyland, but by any measure that matters, it’s light-years away. Straight’s characters are the backbones of......more

Goodreads review by Julie on May 29, 2022

California Oh California I'm coming home Oh make me feel good rock 'n' roll band I'm your biggest fan California I'm coming home The California Joni Mitchell sang of fifty-one years ago (gulp) is the beachy, breezy, sister golden hair Eden of our sweetest dreams. If it was ever thus, those dreams ended l......more

Goodreads review by Chris on August 02, 2022

My gosh, I loved the beauty of the multiple narratives -- and narrators -- in this remarkable book set in and around Coachella. It's a novel of linked threads of people of color, people who have lived in the area for centuries and recent immigrants, some legal and some illegal. The courage and humor......more