Sacrament
A Novel
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3.9 • 8 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize
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).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Straight's immersive latest (after Mecca) follows a group of nurses at the height of Covid-19 in August 2020. The nurses are not only isolated from their families—they live in a makeshift RV village near the hospital in San Bernardino, Calif.—but they cope with all the death they face in the ICU, where their patients are intubated, by not speaking about it. Among the nurses are Larette, who sings to her comatose patients and longs for her husband, Grief Embers, who works for Animal Control, and their son, Dante, who's about to enter high school. Larette's cousin, Cherrise, is one of her coworkers, and Cherrise is constantly worried about her 15-year-old daughter, Raquel, whom she sent to live on her aunt's date farm. Grief's best friend, Johnny Frias, the highway patrolman who featured in Mecca, has a crush on Cherrise, whose husband died eight years earlier in a car accident. Told in alternating points of view, the narrative captures the heroism and sacrifice of healthcare workers during the pandemic, and is shot through with rich depictions of Southern California's landscape, particularly as Raquel learns the ropes of growing dates. It's a vibrant drama.
