Looking For a Good Book

Lost no longer! Picket Line is billed as Elmore Leonard’s “lost novella” and the introduction by C. M. Kushins explains the story behind the story (and why it was considered ‘lost’). A couple of factors make this novella interesting. First, it was written as a proposal for a film based on a 1965 grape strike that brought Cesar Chavez fame. Second, this is neither a crime story or a western – the two genres Elmore Leonard is noted for.

Chino and Paco Rojas are pulled over for littering by a local sheriff after tossing something from their car as they drove from California to Texas. The sheriff finds them to be polite and lets them off with a warning and encourages them to check out a local farm that’s hiring workers. What Chino and Paco discover is a farm that seems to be the hot spot for a growing a strike with strikers laying on a constant verbal barrage to those continuing to work for very low wages.

I really got caught up in Leonard’s writing with this short (easy to read in a day). I was waiting for/expecting a mystery (thinking to myself, “When are they going to find a body or be accused of something?”) but the characters took center stage and I did start to wonder what was going to happen to the different people in their different roles surrounding the farm and the picketers.

It’s a bit didactic, I felt like I was maybe being hit over the head with some moral lesson about standing up against ‘the man’ – 50’s/60’s style. And the ending was a bit bland. I had a “Wait … what? That’s it?” feeling. But of course it almost had to end with that almost non-ending. Life doesn’t have sweet conclusions to most events.

I did want to keep reading about these characters, which I think speaks well to the story.

Fans of Elmore Leonard will definitely want to read this, as will those who like to read about social commentary.

Looking for a good book? Picket Line is a novella by Elmore Leonard that had been ‘lost’ for some time. It breaks out of Leonard’s typical fiction, but the strength of characters carries this nicely.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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Picket Line

author: Elmore Leonard

publisher: Mariner Books

ISBN:  9780063389366

hardcover, 128 pages