In August 2020, a group of nurses are working in the ICU at a hospital in San Bernardino at the height of a Covid surge: Larette Embers, whose husband, Grief, is an animal control officer; Cherrise Martinez, whose husband died years ago in a car crash, and whose daughter Raquel has been sent to a Coachella date farm to live with her great-aunt to avoid the virus; and Marisol Manalang, born in the Philippines but based in Sacramento. To safeguard their families, the nurses are living in a makeshift RV camp close to the hospital; they share food and cigarettes yet keep their work private. For this is a country in crisis, and they are assisting strangers at the edge of death with infinite tenderness and growing desperation.
As Straight’s work invariably does, Sacrament challenges the prevailing notion that the overlooked Californians she centers in her work and in her life are less worthy, less interesting, less human than their wealthier, whiter, more visible urban counterparts ... Broadens the reader’s understanding of community beyond flesh-and-blood friends, family and neighbors. The love and care that flow within her community of characters draws the reader into their bright, tight circle, making the characters’ loved ones and troubles feel like the reader’s own.
Straight transcends the mundanity of covid novels that have concerned themselves with upper-class social distancers. Straight writes vividly ... She avoids the saccharine tone of some appreciations ... The greatest feat of Sacrament is how it moves beyond the perpetual here and now of the pandemic. Straight delves into the characters’ long roots, how they carry their past wounds into the present, and how the desperation and isolation of life during covid affect their relationships and their visions of the future. Sacrament is a deeply humane novel about the tenderness and heartache of caring for strangers.
