Sleep in the Sun

[nice clean book with no discernible wear; the jacket has some minor edgewear and a few little nicks along the top edge, and an array of small water-spots on the lower 1/3 of the front panel]. (pen and ink drawings) An episodic novel set in the fictional(ized) San Marqu Canyon, a self-contained rural community of Mexican families located about twelve miles south of Oxnard, California. Although the primary characters in the book -- Jos Mercado and his wife Mam Chula -- occasionally venture into one town or another (Oxnard most frequently, but also Santa Paula), but apart from that, over the course of this episodic novel, there is virtually no contact with -- indeed almost no reference to -- the Anglo world that exists just a few miles outside this ethnic enclave. The primary exception is the chapter entitled "This of the School," in which a "politico from Oxnard" comes into the community, along with representatives from some unspecified "Board of Education," to propose the establishment of a new school in the community -- to which the residents violently object, due to the fact that it would involve levying a new tax. As Mam Chula exclaims: "I can pay no more to this State of California, if that is what he is after. Last year alone, the tax on my house, two acres of poor land, and cook store, was three dollars and ninety-six cents U.S. money." There is also, in the chapter "The Hombre from Fresno," a visit from Mam Chula's nephew Pedro, now a zoot-suited city boy "who knows the American ways and makes good U.S. money," with his even more fully-Americanized girlfriend in tow -- a wisecracking bean-cannery worker who takes one look at the Mercados' humble shack and blurts out "Caramba! What a dump!" (three years before Bette Davis would immortalize that epithet in BEYOND THE FOREST). On a casual reading, at least, the denizens of San Marqu Canyon seem to be stereotypical Mexicans, but it's possible that the author didn't just invent the milieu out of whole cloth: the jacket blurb claims that he "has known and felt the racial wisdom of his California Mexican neighbors." Alas, however, he had died in his early 40s, the year before this book was published, and biographical information on him is pretty scant. Baird & Greenwood 1801.

Product Info

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company

Year: 1945

Type: Used

Binding: Hardcover

First Edition

Seller Info

ReadInk

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Country: United States