Think of all the great writers who have made their hometowns literary history — William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, Thomas Wolfe, to name a few. Now, Susan Straight is getting the same praise for her portrayal of Riverside, Calif. It's a small town at the foot of the San Bernardino Mountains, an hour east of Los Angeles.
Read any of Straight's 10 books, and you hear tales of a tight-knight black community in a working-class neighborhood, with voices that sound lively and real. Then you meet Straight, and do a double take: she is petite and blond.
