Between Heaven and Here

Starred review from September 17, 2012
The mysterious murder of a hooker kicks off this exquisitely wrought final installment (after Take One Candle Light a Room) of Straight's trilogy, set in fictional Rio Seco, California. When Glorette Picard's longtime admirer, Sidney, discovers her body in a shopping cart in an alley behind a taquería, he fears the wrath or indifference of the police, and so claims her corpse as his responsibility, setting of a storm of consequences. Left behind to weather the world on his own is Glorette's young son, Victor, who memorizes SAT vocabulary words to drown out the crack dealers, and her uncle Enrique, who takes it upon himself to avenge her death. Straight plunges readers into a whirlwind of dialects, drugs, derelict homes, and delinquent locals as she weaves together the story of Glorette's life and death, while addressing weighty and timely issues like race, language, and the socioeconomically disenfranchised. Straight deftly avoids clichés and easy outs, and her refusal to vilify or sanctify the numerous members of her cast allows the experiences of each to resonate powerfully.

October 1, 2012

Who is Glorette Picard? Straight answers this question in the final installment of her "Rio Seco" novels, following A Million Nightingales and Take One Candle Light a Room. The novel begins with the death of the beautiful, drug-addicted Glorette. Former classmate Sidney, who loved her from afar, as many men did, finds her in a shopping cart behind a plaza. Her murder serves as the plot's catalyst, but the beguilement comes from learning about Glorette's family--her son, who struggles to break the bonds of his mother's life, and the uncle willing to kill again to avenge her death--and the family' friends who suffer from their own demons. Straight creates multidimensional characters who are neither villain nor hero. Most interestingly, she tells a story that transcends time, place, class, and race while simultaneously addressing those issues. VERDICT Reminiscent of Ronald M. Gauthier's Crescent City Countdown, this novel will appeal to lovers of suspense and Southern fiction.--Ashanti White, Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 15, 2012
Set several years before the events of Straight's Take One Candle Light a Room (2010), the third installment of her trilogy concerns the reactions and memories that a prostitute's death stirs up in the tightknit black community in Rio Seco, Calif. Video store employee Sidney Chabert notices Glorette Picard's body in a shopping cart in the alley behind the Mexican restaurant where he's just eaten. Glorette has become a streetwalker and a drug addict who has dangerously neglected her brilliant son, Victor. But like every guy who knew her in high school, Sidney has remained in love with Glorette, although it has been 20 years since she was an innocent, preternaturally beautiful girl growing up in orange groves that belonged to her "uncle," Enrique Antoine, and her father, Gustave--the men's binding relationship, their establishment of Rio Seco as a refuge for young women escaping a brutal white rapist in Louisiana, and the method by which Enrique gained ownership of the land are haunting subplots reaching back for generations. Once Sidney alerts Antoine's sons, they bring Glorette's body back to her family to be buried without police involvement. But her death roils the souls of all those whose lives she's touched, however tangentially. In less than 250 pages, Straight develops a lot of characters in surprising depth: Enrique is bound for vengeance, while Gustave is overwhelmed with silent grief. Glorette's former boyfriend Chess has remained devoted to her even after fathering a child with someone else. Enrique's sons can't quite leave their father's home despite wives who strive, with mixed success, to assimilate their children into middle-class America. There are Glorette's frankly skanky prostitute competitors and the men they service, or don't service. And there is Glorette's son, Victor, desperate to make it to college though thwarted at every turn. Straight (who is white but eschews the self-congratulating, cliche-laden condescension of books like The Help) employs glorious language and a riveting eye for detail to create a fully realized, totally believable world.

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September 15, 2012
Every brother on the Westside had fallen in love with Glorette, and even though she'd been on the street for ten years . . . no one had ever fallen out. When her body is discovered behind a taqueria, the repercussions can be felt like an aftershock in the town of Rio Seco, a tightly knit community near L.A., and in Sarrat, where Glorette's family resides among the orange groves. Suspicions run rampant. In Rio Seco, everyone has a secret, some of which are common knowledge, but no one is talking. Straight has not written a murder mystery here but instead has fashioned a closely observed profile of an insular community with roots going back to Louisiana and the flood of 1927. This immersing novel, set five years before Straight's Take One Candle, Light a Room (2010), includes a number of the same characters, and as in its predecessor, past and present are inextricably commingled. Every action brings to mind some past action, reminding us of Faulkner's famous remark, The past is never dead. It's not even past. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)