A Railroad Runs Through It

Review: Mona Alvarado Frazier. A Bridge Home. Houston: Piñata Books Arte Publico Press. 2024. ISBN: 978-1-55885-995-1

Michael Sedano

It's 1972, the Chicano Movement has found its way to a nondescript small California town named San Solano. Railroad tracks divide the town. Raza and black families struggle to make ends meet on their side of town. Seventeen year old Jacqueline Bravo attends St. Bernadette High School, on the anglo side of town. 

Jacqui's a good student whose dream is winning a scholarship to attend UCLA next year. She won't be able to apply for the scholarship if St. Bernadette's transfers Jacqui to public school because she's hundreds of dollars behind on tuition. 

Tuition, rent, bills, five people in a one-bathroom house, a father killed in Vietnam two years before, add incredible stress to the teenager's tortured life. Jacqui perseveres with maturity forced upon her by economics and by having to be big sister mother-substitute to a boy-hungry 13 year old sister (who already gets hickies) and younger twin brothers.

This is the tapestry Mona Alvarado Frazier weaves to entangle her characters in a plot that probably mirrors the lives of young adult readers whom Frazier's story will inspire and motivate to do like Jacqui does in the exciting final chapters. With Jacqui's example, kids won't fall into the traps Jacqui gets herself into. In a sense, Jacqui has no option other than sneak around and take a job behind her mother's back. Jacqui's poorly considered choice is working in a sleazy restaurant-bar. In no time, Jacqui is in over her head running drugs and collecting payments.

To her credit, Jacqui doesn't know what's going on. Catholic school girls can be sheltered from the real world, especially when mother detests the word "chicano" and warns off her eldest child from those people.

Those people are the bridge Jacqui needs to find voice, direction, and salvation. Readers will thrill at the final chapters of Frazier's 43 short chapters, 290 page, gem of a YA novel from Arte Publico's Piñata imprint.

How does a kid find success when repressive nuns clamp down on individuality, practice public shaming of kids whose families fall behind on tuition, and go into high dudgeon over feminism? Jacqui can't go it alone, but that's Jacqui's method. Readers see how wrong it all can turn out, and here's one of Alvarado Frazier's more valuable author's messages: you can't do it alone. You need help.

When Jacqui learns this lesson she awakens her entire community, Mother included, and the movimiento's message hits the streets. El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido.

I won't delve into the finer points of the novel's plot and character development because there's so much fun for readers feeling the tension build as the plot and characters wind their way to an entirely engaging and satisfying climax. It's only for Jacqui, but there's probably good news for her peers. And the community might get that bridge spanning the railroad tracks.

One significant change I'd like to see: Piñata must devote a lot more attention to editing out the novel's several apostrophe-as-plural errors. It's not a minor flaw when YA readers are soaking in a wonderful story filled with important lessons about character, desperation, honesty, academics. Ineffective editing blinds the kids to effective spelling and perpetuates inattention to detail.

Mona Alvarado Frazier clearly is hitting her stride as a writer and author of YA literature. A Bridge Home, her second novel, marks a high point in a promising future.

You can order publisher-direct at https://artepublicopress.com/browse-and-order-books/ or ask your local indie bookseller to get your copies of this $15.95 gem.