Picket Line
The Lost Novella
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- USD 12.99
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- USD 12.99
Descripción editorial
“This is the best of a magnificent writer's magnificent books.”—Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried
The first major release in nearly a decade from the late, best-selling Elmore Leonard—"the greatest crime writer of our time, perhaps ever!” (New York Times Book Review): Picket Line is the never-before-published, prescient story of a budding agricultural strike in Texas, the racial tension brewing in the fields, and what happens when brutality from “the man” goes unchecked.
“If a man comes out of the field and goes on the picket line, even for one day, he’ll never be the same...”
Chino and Paco Rojas seem well-mannered, at least for Chicanos, to the white cops that pull them over for littering on the long drive from California to Trinity, Texas. So well-mannered, in fact, that Captain Frank McKellan lets them off with a warning and recommends them a job at Stanzik Farms, the largest independent melon grower in the area.
But Chino and Paco didn’t drive all this way for work. Instead, Chino is looking for a mysterious man, Vincent Mora, whose new Valley Agricultural Workers Association is causing a scene striking against the farm owners.
Stanzik’s fields and Mora’s union bring together a cast of unlikely characters: Connie Chavez, a former picker and blossoming revolutionary who leads with a bullhorn and a fearless mouth; Bud Davis, a white Xavier University student working for spending money; Harold Ritchie, a local marine-turned-cop; Luis Tamez, a striker whose grandson served with Harold in Vietnam; and many more, including the pragmatic Chino, who finds himself pulled irrevocably into the cause. Some are neighbors, others just passing through. Some know each other well, or at least thought they did…before the picket line.
This never-before-published gem from master storyteller Elmore Leonard describes the early days of an unprecedented farmers’ movement; the complex cast of Chicanos, Anglos, and migrants that impact the union; and the careful balance of passion, patience, and pure, stupid guts that it takes to hold the line.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This previously unpublished 1970 novella from suspense master Leonard (Djibouti), who died in 2013, offers a diverting window into a key period of his career. Written before Leonard's breakthrough, when he was a hired-gun author of westerns, the novella developed out of a film treatment inspired by Cesar Chavez's 1965 Delano grape strike, which eventually became the 1974 film Mr. Majestyk. The book follows a large cast of characters who converge around a strike against Texas melon grower Stanzik Farms. Vincent Mora, a Chavez-inspired ex-priest, is the strike's patient ringleader, who's trying to persuade more growers to recognize and work with labor unions while meeting resistance from all sides. Other key players include Francisco "Chino" de la Cruz, an ex-con newly arrived from California, who takes a job at Stanzik and gravitates toward the union mainly as a means of sticking it to whatever man he can, and Connie Chavez, a charismatic 20-year-old devoted to the revolution in all its forms. With resonant themes and taut pacing, the novella paints an intense and immersive portrait of a small-town clash that heats up quickly and stays hot, though its roots as a plot outline are clear. This may not stand with the author's best work—the ending is especially abrupt—but Leonard diehards will rejoice all the same.
