Susan Straight

From National Book Award finalist Susan Straight, a captivating new novel about a group of nurses fighting through the first year of a pandemic and the beloved California community they will risk their lives to protect In August 2020, a group of nurses are working in the ICU at a hospital in San Bernardino at the height of a Covid surge: Larette Embers, whose husband, Grief, is an animal control officer; Cherrise Martinez, whose husband died years ago in a car crash, and whose daughter Raquel has been sent to a Coachella date farm to live with her great-aunt to avoid the virus; and Marisol Manalang, born in the Philippines but based in Sacramento. 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. 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. Brilliantly highlighting both the quiet heroism and extraordinary bravery of first responders, Sacrament once again proves that Susan Straight is the "essential voice in American writing and in writing of the West" (The New York Times).

Robert Frank’s and Todd Webb’s parallel 1955 projects to photograph America are considered in the context of mid-twentieth-century American culture In 1955 two photographers were awarded grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation to embark on trips across the United States. Robert Frank (1924–2019) drove coast to coast, photographing the highways, bars, and people that formed the basis for his widely admired publication The Americans (1958). Todd Webb (1905–2000) walked across the country, searching for “vanishing Americana and what is taking its place.” Unaware of each other’s work, the photographers produced strikingly similar images of the highway, parades, and dim, smoky barrooms. Yet while Frank’s grainy, off-kilter style revealed many inequities of American life, Webb’s carefully composed images embraced clear detail and celebrated the individual oddities of Americans and their locales. This revelatory book is the first to publish Webb’s 1955 photographs and connects these parallel projects for the first time. More than one hundred images accompany text illuminating Frank’s and Webb’s different perspectives and approaches to similar subjects and places; the difference in reception of Frank’s iconic work and Webb’s relatively unknown series; and the place of the road trip in shaping American identity at midcentury. Published in association with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Exhibition Schedule: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (October 8, 2023–January 7, 2024) Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts (February 10–July 30, 2024) Brandywine Museum of Art, Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania (February 8–May 4, 2025)

"A wide and deep view of a dynamic, multiethnic Southern California . . . Susan Straight is an essential voice in American writing and in writing of the West." --The New York Times Book Review Named a most anticipated book of March 2022 by the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and Alta From the National Book Award finalist Susan Straight, Mecca is a stunning epic tracing the intertwined lives of native Californians fighting for life and land Johnny Fr as 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.

One of The Washington Post's Ten Best Books of 2022. Finalist for the 2022 Kirkus Prize and the 2023 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. One of the New York Times' 10 Best California Books of 2022 and one of NPR's Best Books of 2022. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice." A wide and deep view of a dynamic, multiethnic Southern California . . . Susan Straight is an essential voice in American writing and in writing of the West." --The New York Times Book Review From the National Book Award finalist Susan Straight, Mecca is a stunning epic tracing the intertwined lives of native Californians fighting for life and land Johnny Fr as 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.

In nineteenth-century New England, in the shadow of the Civil War, the four teenaged March sisters will come of age sharing joys and hardships, dreams and disappointments. In the throes of unfamiliar poverty and adult responsibility the girls, with their wildly different personalities, find it's not an easy time to make the transition from girlhood to womanhood. But nurtured by their wise and beloved Marmee, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy are bound by their love for one another and the feminine strength they share.

In this "miraculous" novel by the author of Highwire Moon, a Lowcountry woman finds her place in the world during the Civil Rights era (USA Today). In 1959, thirteen-year-old Marietta Cook is as tall as she is reserved, a quiet outsider in an already marginalized community of slave descendants rooted in South Carolina's low country. While she and her ailing mother eke out a modest existence selling hand-woven baskets by the side of the road, Marietta often wonders what lies beyond their horizon. When her mother passes, young Marietta makes her way to Charleston in search of her uncle. What she finds is a nation in turmoil, with the rights of all citizens at stake. Drawn into the wider world of a national movement, Marietta experiences new pleasures, heartbreak, and the uncertainties, as well as joys, of motherhood. As she watches her twins mature into gifted and successful athletes, Marietta comes to appreciate her own gifts in a long life well lived. A moving portrayal of one woman's life, USA Today called it "miraculous in its astonishing richness of detail, its emotional honesty, and its breadth of human thought and feeling." Robert Kirsch Award winner Susan Straight has written an "elegantly constructed" novel with a beautifully vivid sense of place (Publishers Weekly).

No one's ever fallen out of love with Glorette Picard, with her black waterfall of hair and skin gold as a mothwing. Fine as wine and just my kind, they call her. Gilt, they call her. Still, when they drive by the alley where she works every night, they call her other things. Now Glorette's body is found in that alley, folded up in a shopping cart. Before the dry creek swells and the orange groves blossom, Rio Seco, California, will bury the most beautiful woman who ever walked its streets. In Susan Straight's most gracefully told novel, the heart of the Inland Empire is broken wide open to reveal the loyalty, the dark history, and the love that runs in the veins of a hidden America. Between Heaven and Here is gripping in its compassion? a portrait that ?ought to be recognized as a national artistic treasure" (The Boston Globe).

Louisa May Alcott shares the innocence of girlhood in this classic coming of age story about four sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. In picturesque nineteenth-century New England, tomboyish Jo, beautiful Meg, fragile Beth, and romantic Amy are responsible for keeping a home while their father is off to war. At the same time, they must come to terms with their individual personalities—and make the transition from girlhood to womanhood. It can all be quite a challenge. But the March sisters, however different, are nurtured by their wise and beloved Marmee, bound by their love for each other and the feminine strength they share. Readers of all ages have fallen instantly in love with these Little Women. Their story transcends time—making this novel endure as a classic piece of American literature that has captivated generations of readers with their charm, innocence, and wistful insights. This Signet Classics edition contains Little Women in its entirety, including Parts I and II. With an Introduction by Regina Bareccaand an Afterword by Susan Straight

A WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR From the author of A Million Nightingales ("a writer of exceptional gifts and grace"--Joyce Carol Oates) comes a luminous new novel about the forces that tear families apart and the ties that bind them together. Fantine Antoine is a travel writer, a profession that keeps her happily away from her Southern California home. When she returns to mark the fifth anniversary of the murder of her closest childhood friend, Glorette, she finds herself pulled into the tumultuous life of Glorette's twenty-two-year-old son--and Fantine's godson--Victor. After getting involved in a shooting, Victor has fled to New Orleans. Together with her father, Fantine follows Victor, determined to help him avoid the criminal future that he suddenly seems destined for. On this journey her father will reveal the wrenching secrets of his past, and Fantine will be compelled to question the most essential choices she's made in her life.

“Aquaboogie is a love story in fragments . . . A book by a writer whose love for her characters infuses her work with the dignity and urgency they so clearly deserve.” —The New York Times Book Review Full of defiance and tenderness, Aquaboogie chronicles the triumphs and tragedies of the residents of Rio Seco. In “Aquaboogie,” art student Nacho finances his class out East by working as a janitor, subject to torment by his white coworkers. In “Back,” elderly Pashion sleeps wrapped around the body of her dying husband L. C., all the while recalling their 49 years of marriage and thinking about the sleeping pills she has secreted away for when life becomes unbearable. In “The Box,” Shawan carries her radio everywhere; since her best friend was gunned down, music is the only thing that can get her through the day. In these and other stories in this powerful collection, the author gives voice to those on the margins while demonstrating her great affection for her characters.

From National Book Award finalist Susan Straight comes a haunting historical novel about a Louisiana slave girl's perilous journey to freedom. Daughter of an African mother and a white father she never knew, Moinette is a house maid on a plantation south of New Orleans. At fourteen she is sold, separated from her mother without a chance to say goodbye. Bright, imaginative and well aware of everything she risks, Moinette at once begins to prepare for an opportunity to escape. Inspired by a true story, A Million Nightingales portrays Moinette's experience-and the treacherous world she must navigate-with uncommon richness, intricacy, and drama.

The author's third novel traces the effects of racially motivated violence on three generations of a black family from California, from the Tulsa riots of the twenties to the notorious riots of the nineties. Reprint. Tour.