Camp Olvido: A Novella - Softcover

Fiction. California Interest. In the California heartland in 1932, at a migrant labor camp whose very name means forgotten, a child's sudden illness leads to tensions between workers wishing to break camp and the land barons enforcing their contracts. Into this dispute Esteban Alas—contrabandista and self- styled businessman—is reluctantly drawn as a mediator, until an act of violence forces him into a more tragic role.

"CAMP OLVIDO is everything a novella should be—intense as it is resonant, propulsive as it is deep—but, even more than a shining example of the form, it is simply a great story. I haven't read anything as powerful about pickers and California since I read John Steinbeck. Lawrence Coates writes with every bit as much tenderness and compassion, but this moving novella—full of characters I won't forget and images I can't—is cut with a clear-eyed, brutal honesty that gives it a hard-won wisdom and beauty all its own."—Josh Weil

"[A] stunning exploration of one man's bold actions and their consequences. Gorgeously written, the novella shows the dark side of California's prosperity, with violence and, unexpectedly, elements of the divine. A superb addition to a distinguished series."—Cary Holladay

"I have rarely read a novella so rich, with the moral complexities of Melville's Billy Budd and the social and visual acuity of a film like Buñuel's Los olvidados... Read CAMP OLVIDO, a masterful work of fiction, as provocative as it is jaw-dropping in its beauty."—Wendell Mayo

"In CAMP OLVIDO, Lawrence Coates paints a sensual and humane picture of life and death in a depression-era work camp peopled by Latino fieldworkers... showing not only the sorrow of endemic poverty and powerlessness but the love and good humor of a community that can endure."—Bonnie Jo Campbell

Lawrence Coates is the author of four novels, most recently The Goodbye House. He has received such honors as the Western States Book Award in Fiction and an NEA Fellowship in Fiction. He teaches Creative Writing at Bowling Green State University.