Angeleños: L.A.'s Golden Age

"Drawing deeply upon his family background, Ron Schuler tells a fictionalized tale of two families who arrive in East Los Angeles in 1919: the Martín family, fleeing the Revolution in Zacatecas, Mexico through Arizona copper mines and ranchos southeast of L.A.; and the Baumiller family, from Kansas City, Kansas, starting a new life after a wildcat transit strike goes awry. Young Fernando "Joe" Martín, a prizefighting foundry laborer, meets a clever, movie-crazy Sonoran girl, Anna Garza, who endures his frailties and inspires him as he gathers a following as a charismatic bartender at the Club, where the rich and powerful of L.A. and Hollywood mingle in the 1930s and 40s. Meanwhile, Floyd Baumiller, a streetcar motorman, with his wife Alpha and children, come up empty-handed searching for Old West ideals in the American City of Last Resort. A descendant of both families -- half-Mexican, half-Anglo, known by his genealogy website handle "bauwau685" -- returns to the West Coast and searches for his roots among the traces of these families and amid the Golden Age of L.A. itself ... its old boxing gyms and speakeasies, its after-hours clubs, Bible rallies and quack doctors, California politicians and the fringes of Hollywood, the unraveling of the streetcar system and the sinister launch of the aerospace industry, and against an undercurrent of official and unofficial racism toward Mexican immigrants. In the process, "bauwau685" uncovers tragic secrets that were never meant to be exposed and discovers the extent to which identities can be fabricated and reimagined in a city in which image is everything, and truth is ephemeral"--