pbA heartbreaker from beginning to end, iMecca iboth shocks and moves in its powerful and unrelenting portrait of this sunny, fiery state. --Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of iThe Committed i bbrbbrFrom the National Book Award finalist Susan Straight, iMeccai is a stunning epic tracing the intertwined lives of native Californians fighting for life and land pbJohnny Frias has California in his blood. A descendant of the state's Indigenous people and Spanish settlers, he has Southern California's forgotten towns and canyons in his soul. He spends his days working for the California Highway Patrol pulling over speeders, ignoring their racist insults, and pushing past the trauma of his rookie year, when he killed a man who was in the midst of assaulting a young woman named Bunny, who proceeded to run away. But like the Santa Ana winds, which every year bring risk of fire, Johnny's moment of action twenty years ago sparks a slow-burning chain of connections that unites a vibrant, complex cast of