The Silver Cloud Cafe - Hardcover

Alfredo Vea; Alfredo Vea, Jr.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0525940774 ISBN 13: 9780525940777

Publisher: Dutton Adult, 1996

Synopsis

The Silver Cloud Cafe is a novel that goes beyond and beneath. Beyond and beneath the glossy surface of San Francisco. Beyond and beneath the clean-scrubbed image of American life. It goes to the Mission District, where two neon angels stand watch over the ramshackle cantina known as Raphael's Silver Cloud Cafe and where the lost and lonely, desperate and dispossessed, come for a meager portion of solace and salvation in the form of companionship, drink, and sex. It goes to the dark waters under the Fourth Street Bridge, where the corpse of a failed priest surfaces, and to the jailhouse, where a nattily dressed midget takes credit and demands punishment for the crime.
This amazing novel is at once a gripping murder mystery that probes two macabre killings forty years apart and a panoramic meditation on the magical, mystical mix of race and culture in America. Its spellbinding story of intertwining guilt and innocence, crime and punishment, ranges over the century, from the bloody Christero Wars of the Mexican Revolution to the stifling rigidities of class and caste in the Philippines to the bitter harvests of migrants in the California farmlands to the feeding frenzy and human downsizing of the 1990s. Its characters include a Chicano lawyer and a Jewish investigator who have seen too much and believe too little; a Mexican priest torn by twin lusts for sex and vengeance; a black ex-boxer who is down but not out; a bar owner with a sense of divine mission; and a host of other unforgettable men and women who join in a superbly orchestrated symphony of voices and visions.

About this title

Review:

Fans of the deadpan darkness of Raymond Chandler who are also interested in the magic realism of Gabriel García M´rquez should enjoy this unusual but highly effective mixture of both styles by the author of La Maravilla. Born into a family of migrant workers in Arizona, Alfredo Véa Jr. was a soldier in Vietnam and put himself through law school by working at a series of grueling jobs. That background plays a part in this intriguing story set in the Hispanic underworld of San Francisco's Mission District, where two killings 40 years apart are linked by chains of blood and history.

About the Author:

Alfredo Vea was born in Arizona and worked as a migrant farm worker as a child and a young man. He served in Vietnam and after his discharge worked a series of jobs, ranging from truck driver to carnival mechanic, as he put himself through law school. Now a practicing criminal defense attorney, Vea is also the author of two previous novels, La Maravilla and The Silver Cloud Cafe. He lives in San Francisco, California.

About this edition

• Publisher: Dutton Adult
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0525940774
• ISBN 13: 9780525940777
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352