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What is the last book you picked up that was so beautifully written (even though the content was powerful and forced you to truly think about your life and the lives of others) that you thought: I will read anything this author ever writes? I thought of John Steinbeck.
I am awed by Pescadero, by Hollis Brady, which launches April 21st with a book signing at Reach & Teach Bookstore, 1179 San Carlos Avenue, San Carlos, at 4pm.
I first met Holly when we both worked at the Stanford Alumni Association in the late 90s; Holly was the director of the Stanford Publishing Courses, and I was the director of Online Services. Fast forward a few decades, and Holly edited my first book, No U-Turn at Mercy Street. Now Holly teaches a class at Stanford Continuing Studies: How to Self-Publish: A Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Writers.
While Holly was writing Pescadero, I was writing I Do, I Don’t: How to Build a Better Marriage. Holly came up with my book and chapter titles. I read Pescadero and gave her detailed feedback that she needed to build out one character more so that his future actions made more sense. She took my advice, and I took hers. We supported one another in seeking agents/publishers. I am thrilled to introduce Pescadero to you, Readers.
From the back cover:
“A Midwest girl bears witness to–and then becomes engulfed in–the struggles of two migrant brothers separated by an implacable border. Fourteen-year-old Hilde, raised on a family farm in Wisconsin, is dragged to the northern California coastal town of Pescadero by a mother fleeing a bad marriage.
But Pescadero is worlds away from the conservative Midwest, and Hilde finds herself adrift in a community where every attitude she absorbed growing up seem off-key.
When her mother hires an undocumented farmworker to tend the goat farm the family is trying to revive, Hilde strikes up an unlikely friendship with him and soon learns of his plan to bring his brother across the border. But the brother’s journey turns calamitous, and Hilde soon finds herself entangled in its harrowing aftermath.”
I recently got the opportunity to interview Holly:
For those who aren’t familiar, can you tell us what readers can expect from this book?
Pescadero is two stories woven into one.
The first is a coming-of age story. It’s about a young American girl from the conservative Midwest, Hilde, who is dragged to Pescadero along with her brother, Ethan, by their mother who plans to revive a goat farm and sell cheese to high-end restaurants in San Francisco. Their family is falling apart. And no one is trying to put it back together except Hilde, the peacemaker.
The second is the story of two undocumented brothers, Gabe in Pescadero, and Joaquin, in a Mexico City slum. For them, family is everything, and they are trying desperately to reunite. The story of Joaquin’s border crossing is an amalgamation of stories I heard personally from migrants during my visits to the U.S. border in Texas, Arizona and California.
How did this project come about?
I’m an editor by trade, and 10 years ago I edited a manuscript of stories about undocumented workers in Pescadero by Wendy Taylor, the former pastor at Pescadero Community Church. I was so struck by those stories that I accompanied Rev. Taylor to El Paso and Juarez where I was introduced to a community of people, including migrants trying to cross and volunteers helping them. Several years later I went again, this time with a group called Borderlinks, which educates school and church groups about border issues. And in 2018, I decided to participate in a civil disobedience action in San Ysidro, California, to protest Trump’s policy of separating children from their parents in detention centers.
In that weekend, I learned a lot. About 100 of us protesters slept on the floor of a church near the detention center, preparing for the protest. When the organizers asked who might be willing to be arrested, I volunteered. I figured I’m older, I’m a woman, I’m white, and I don’t have to be at work on Monday morning, so this was something I could do with my privilege. The organizers gave each of us a pair of kids’ shoes and wrote a phone number on our forearms, a place to call if we got arrested.
The next day as we marched around the detention center, we chanted. And when we stopped—and listened to the silence—we heard the women’s voices from the inside, through tiny slit windows: “Where have they taken our children?”
Once we reached the main gate, those of us who’d been trained in civil disobedience stepped on to the detention center property, which was illegal, and tied the children’s shoes to the chain link fence. Then we linked arms and stood until the police came. We stood in the sun for quite some time, until the police and local journalists arrived.
The police soon realized there were too many of us to arrest, and so they decided to arrest 12 people and let the others go with just a citation. We were given the opportunity to choose who would be arrested. We chose 12 protestors who were all clergy, and they put on their collars. The police realized this would be a poor photo visual, so they didn’t arrest anyone. Interestingly, none of us ended up with a citation, either.
Why did you become an author?
I have always been a reader, and especially loved books with a social justice bent, such as John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and William Styron’s Confessions of Nat Turner. Those books changed my worldview and I wanted to see if I could effect some change with my own writing.
Also, I spent my career as an editor and writing critic, which is different from being a creator. I realized you need more courage to be a creator.
What kind of obstacles did you face while putting this title together?
I realized as I was writing Pescadero that there would be criticism of me, as a white woman, writing about a culture that is not my own. It’s an accusation of cultural appropriation that has happened to many other authors—Steinbeck and Styron among them. Sure enough, it’s coming my way. But what would literature be like if we all wrote only about our own culture?
What would you say is the most rewarding part of the process?
Oh, that’s easy. It’s when a reader picks up on what I tried to put down on paper. Recently, a reader wrote: ‘At the end of Pescadero, I felt like the American family were migrants, too, having lost any sense of home with each other. Did I read that right?’ It is a most gratifying feeling!
In terms of audience, who is this book for?
Anyone who likes books with a social justice bent. Anyone that wants to be moved emotionally.
I intentionally wrote Pescadero as a short book with short chapters—a staccato pace that moves back and forth between the two stories—so readers can digest it a bit at a time.
What are you hoping readers take away from this book?
I want readers to recognize the humanity of the people they see as silhouettes on the news. I want them to understand why these people are crossing the border, what they’re getting away from. Most of these countries are not like America. People are coming from lawless states and towns. How desperate do you have to be as a woman to attempt to make a four-day trek across the desert with your babies?
Americans have a responsibility–our policies have partially created this exodus. NAFTA encouraged trade between the US and Mexico, and our subsidized corn practices undercut Mexican farmers. It forced farmers and their families into cities where they encountered other problems, and eventually people migrate north.
Readers, I hope Holly has left you with much to think about, and maybe even get involved with. Please check out Pescadero and go meet the author in San Carlos on the 21st.