The gettin place

Susan Straight

Hyperion, Jun 1, 1996 - Fiction - 488 pages

Straight's brilliant story of the effects of violence in America on three generations of a family is told through the lives of the Thompsons, a large, independent clan who live in Treetown, above downtown Rio Seco, California, and operate a car towing and repair business. Patriarch Hosea is a proud man, and a hardened one, whose father was killed in the violence that erupted in Tulsa many years earlier. All Hosea's memories come flooding back with ferocious force when the bodies of two white women are found engulfed in flames in an abandoned car on his property. These are the first signs that someone wants Hosea off his land; it is up to his son Marcus, the only one of the six children of Hosea and his half-Mexican wife who can negotiate with the white world, to help the family hold on to their home and their livelihood. But it is only when Marcus' nephew Mortrice - a young man infatuated with guns and the power that they bring - comes back to Rio Seco from gang-ridden Los Angeles that the real secrets of the bodies found on Thompson land are revealed, as Rio Seco erupts in the same wave of trashing and looting that has engulfed the nearby metropolis.

What people are saying

Review: The Gettin Place

User Review  - Ayelet Waldman - Goodreads

Susan Straight is such a pitch perfect writer. It's amazing to me how she manages to create perfect worlds in just a very few sentences.

Review: The Gettin Place

User Review  - Nancyh - Goodreads

As I previously noted I was new to Straight when I read Between Heaven and Here earlier this year. Her writing is literary perfection and I will start another of her books soon. My favorite part of ...

About the author

Susan Straight is the author of many highly acclaimed novels for adults, including "Highwire Moon," a National Book Award Nominee, and "I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots," She lives in California with her three daughters.

"From the Hardcover edition.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The gettin place
• Author: Susan Straight
• Publisher: Hyperion, 1996
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: Mar 17, 2008
• ISBN: 0786860863, 9780786860869
• Length: 488 pages
• Subjects: African American families; African American families/ Fiction; African Americans; African Americans/ Fiction; Families; Family; Fiction / Family Life; Fiction / General; Fiction / Historical; Historical fiction; Tulsa (Okla.)