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The Ballad of Sara Zane: The story of two surfers, a brahma bull rider and a country western singer
Paperback
Series: Shawn McQueen Trilogy, Book 1
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ISBN10: 1511919892
ISBN13: 9781511919890
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: Apr 27 2015
Pages: 504
Weight: 1.09
Height: 1.01 Width: 5.00 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
ISBN13: 9781511919890
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: Apr 27 2015
Pages: 504
Weight: 1.09
Height: 1.01 Width: 5.00 Depth: 8.00
Language: English
The Ballad of Sara Zane, the first novel in Mike Davis's Shawn McQueen Trilogy, is an evocative journey through post-war America seen through the eyes of a young Polish-Jewish refugee. Sixteen-year-old Sara Niezabitowska, who survived the Holocaust as a child, travels the length of the United States with her parents in a battered flatbed Ford, following the picking seasons in search of stability and belonging.
As the Niezabitowska family heads down California's Highway 1 in 1951, Sara's voice reveals a haunting mix of innocence, loss, and longing. Her parents-once educated professionals in Warsaw-are reduced to migrant workers, hardened by survival yet bound by hope. In vivid, cinematic prose, Davis paints their journey as both physical and spiritual: a family in exile, caught between the ghosts of Europe and the uncertain promise of racist America.
When the family reaches California, fate delivers a miracle. Tomasz, Sara's father, is offered work as an accountant by the benevolent Señor Villareal, lifting them from itinerant poverty into a semblance of normal life. For Sara, the change marks the awakening of youth: freedom, friendship, and first love. Through her friendship with the spirited Margie and her encounters at the beaches of Malibu-where she meets the larger-than-life surfer Dale Velzy and Hollywood stuntman Tommy Zane-Sara's world opens to new possibilities and heartbreaks. She falls in love, pregnant and they say died of a broken heart leaving an orphan daughter named Gina suffering the orphan's unique angst of not knowing who or why she is. It'll take a miracle to complete her circle and couple of surfers and a busted up little bull rider do it by accident. It is here that fate intervenes and drops recently widowed surfboard shaper Shawn McQueen into the mix to bridge the worlds.
Davis weaves a rich tapestry of cultures-Polish, Mexican, Californian-against the backdrop of 1950s America's surf, sun, and social change. Sara's coming-of-age mirrors a universal search for identity and belonging, touching on displacement, prejudice, resilience, and love's redemptive power. With lyrical realism and historical sensitivity, The Ballad of Sara Zane captures the fragility and courage of youth rising from the ashes of war into the mythic light of the American dream. Miracles, ya gotta know 'em when you see 'em an' then you gotta go to where they happen. - Dale Velzy
When the family reaches California, fate delivers a miracle. Tomasz, Sara's father, is offered work as an accountant by the benevolent Señor Villareal, lifting them from itinerant poverty into a semblance of normal life. For Sara, the change marks the awakening of youth: freedom, friendship, and first love. Through her friendship with the spirited Margie and her encounters at the beaches of Malibu-where she meets the larger-than-life surfer Dale Velzy and Hollywood stuntman Tommy Zane-Sara's world opens to new possibilities and heartbreaks. She falls in love, pregnant and they say died of a broken heart leaving an orphan daughter named Gina suffering the orphan's unique angst of not knowing who or why she is. It'll take a miracle to complete her circle and couple of surfers and a busted up little bull rider do it by accident. It is here that fate intervenes and drops recently widowed surfboard shaper Shawn McQueen into the mix to bridge the worlds.
Davis weaves a rich tapestry of cultures-Polish, Mexican, Californian-against the backdrop of 1950s America's surf, sun, and social change. Sara's coming-of-age mirrors a universal search for identity and belonging, touching on displacement, prejudice, resilience, and love's redemptive power. With lyrical realism and historical sensitivity, The Ballad of Sara Zane captures the fragility and courage of youth rising from the ashes of war into the mythic light of the American dream. Miracles, ya gotta know 'em when you see 'em an' then you gotta go to where they happen. - Dale Velzy
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