Description
Description
In this powerful, great-hearted story, Susan Straight takes us back to the multiracial area of southern California that is, in Faulkner's phrase, her "postage stamp of soil." As in her highly acclaimed earlier novels, she has created a world of richly imagined characters struggling to retain their dignity and humanity in an often brutal environment. Serafina is a young Mexican Indian girl desperate to leave her impoverished existence in Oaxaca. Emigrating illegally to California, adrift on her own, she becomes involved with Larry Foley, a feckless trucker and occasional speed freak. When a baby daughter, Elvia, is born, Serafina cares for her tenderly until the day she is forcibly separated from her child and deported. Elvia, who has known nothing but sheltering love, is thrust into foster care. Eventually reclaimed by her father, she shares his chaotic life until she becomes pregnant at fifteen. In a frenzy of fear and despair, she is Tlled with an overwhelming need to find her mother. Her quest leads her into the world of migrant farm labor, where bitter toil, violence, and sexual predation make clear how little has changed since the Joad family harvested the grapes of wrath. With unfailing compassion and profound emotional truth, HIGHWIRE MOON takes us into a hidden universe of love, pain, and stubborn hope. It is sure to appeal to Susan Straight's ardent admirers -- almost a cult readership now -- and to find many new ones.
About the Author
About the Author
Susan Straight has published eight novels and a memoir, In the Country of Women. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and received the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement from the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the O. Henry Prize, the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She was born in Riverside, California, where she lives with her family.
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
Praise for Highwire Moon
A National Book Award Finalist "Her gallery of misfits reminds one of Flannery O'Connor's--but with a dash of sympathy and human goodness."--The Washington Post Book World "An eye-opener of a novel, a road map to the real California . . . [Straight] turns headlines into poetry."--The New York Times Book Review "Packed with the kind of detail about people, places and emotions that transport the reader to a different world."--San Francisco Chronicle "One of America's gutsiest writers . . . a polyglot with an astonishing ear for how people really talk in places we hardly remember they are living."--The Baltimore Sun "Heartrending."--Publishers Weekly Praise for In The Country of Women "What a beautiful book! In the Country of Women must be the most populated, celebratory, filled-with-life memoir of our time. With her characteristic mix of compassion, warmth, humor, and acerbic insight, Susan Straight writes of her 'massive black and mixed-race family' and her 'quirky, deeply embedded white family'--a memoir that is, though addressed to her three daughters, a valentine to virtually everyone whom the renowned author has known in the course of her vividly described life. Unlike most contemporary memoirs, which focus upon singular, self-obsessed individuals, Susan Straight's is about an entire way of life, lived with great verve and passion: 'a strange California transcendentalism which never fit in with American upward mobility.'" --Joyce Carol Oates "In the Country of Women is moving, fierce, and gorgeous. In a time of individualistic fragmentation and the tearing of the social fabric, Straight offers the contrary narrative, the essential need for community, its past and future, and celebrates her place in its weaving." --Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander "In the Country of Women is the astonishingly beautiful story of a life and family history that could only happen in California, just as California is a place (and an idea--of expansion, light, color, a meeting of bloodlines and cultures) that could only happen in America." --Attica Locke, author of Bluebird, Bluebird
A National Book Award Finalist "Her gallery of misfits reminds one of Flannery O'Connor's--but with a dash of sympathy and human goodness."--The Washington Post Book World "An eye-opener of a novel, a road map to the real California . . . [Straight] turns headlines into poetry."--The New York Times Book Review "Packed with the kind of detail about people, places and emotions that transport the reader to a different world."--San Francisco Chronicle "One of America's gutsiest writers . . . a polyglot with an astonishing ear for how people really talk in places we hardly remember they are living."--The Baltimore Sun "Heartrending."--Publishers Weekly Praise for In The Country of Women "What a beautiful book! In the Country of Women must be the most populated, celebratory, filled-with-life memoir of our time. With her characteristic mix of compassion, warmth, humor, and acerbic insight, Susan Straight writes of her 'massive black and mixed-race family' and her 'quirky, deeply embedded white family'--a memoir that is, though addressed to her three daughters, a valentine to virtually everyone whom the renowned author has known in the course of her vividly described life. Unlike most contemporary memoirs, which focus upon singular, self-obsessed individuals, Susan Straight's is about an entire way of life, lived with great verve and passion: 'a strange California transcendentalism which never fit in with American upward mobility.'" --Joyce Carol Oates "In the Country of Women is moving, fierce, and gorgeous. In a time of individualistic fragmentation and the tearing of the social fabric, Straight offers the contrary narrative, the essential need for community, its past and future, and celebrates her place in its weaving." --Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander "In the Country of Women is the astonishingly beautiful story of a life and family history that could only happen in California, just as California is a place (and an idea--of expansion, light, color, a meeting of bloodlines and cultures) that could only happen in America." --Attica Locke, author of Bluebird, Bluebird
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
Publisher:
Catapult
Pub date:
2019-10-22
Length:
362 pages
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