John DeSimone

Movements like Eat Local and Farm to Table have people very cognizant of where their food comes from these days. People want to know that the food is ethically sourced and the farm workers are well treated. There's more of a spotlight on migrant workers, many of whom are undocumented, and the ways they are exploited to harvest the crops we all want on our tables. Certainly we're not even close to perfect in our ethical treatments of people, livestock, and land, but over all, the improvements show more have been vast and the farming industry knows it is under more scrutiny than it once was. How did it get this way though? How many people know about César Chavez and his fight to unionize the vineyards in Central California, his determination to achieve his goals by non-violent methods, or his hunger strike? How many people know just how recent this movement was? John DeSimone's novel, The Road to Delano, is set firmly in the 1950s farming world, a world on the verge of change, undergoing a difficult and contentious revolution.

Jack Duncan was eight when his father, Sugar, a farmer, died in a car accident, having gone off the road on his way home from a grower's convention. Jack's always been told that his father had been drinking when he died. Now ten years after Sugar's untimely death, Jack and his mother are on the verge of losing the single acre their house sits on, the last acre they still own of the vast farm that Sugar had been building but had apparently gambled and lost in a card game, to back taxes. So Jack sets off on the old, but still functional farm combine, to sell it in town and get the money to save the Duncan home. Along the way he stops to help an older man in the road. Herm had been his father's best friend and he tells Jack that Sugar's death was not an accident and that he, Jack, deserves to know the truth. Jack, and his friend Adrian, son of a Mexican American farm worker, are set to leave Delano come August for college, hopefully with baseball scholarships in hand. But the knowledge that Herm has given to Jack eats at him and amidst the escalating tensions that Jack can't fully understand, he wades into the dangerous world of the ongoing strike, learns firsthand the reasons behind César Chavez's movement, and goes toe to toe with the powerful growers of the area.

Jack's desire to do right by the people he cares about, saving their family home for his mother, naively poking into the past and his father's death looking for justice, standing by Adrian and his family no matter the danger in that stance, drives the plot forward. As a not quite 18 year old boy, who is neither a grower's son nor a farm worker's son, there's much he doesn't understand about the way his world works and he makes mistakes and missteps that are much more catastrophic for others than for him. Always possessed of a good heart, he learns as the novel goes on, maturing and growing in compassion, wisdom, and skill.

DeSimone does a good job weaving the potentially championship baseball season for the team with both grower's sons and farm worker's sons on it and Jack and Adrian's struggle to block out everything except that small white ball and the diamond with the volatile and unpredictable atmosphere of the town. If the novel starts with simmering tension, it ratchets up exponentially and the focus narrows as the pages turn. Jack is well drawn and complex as a character, struggling to live up to his father's reputation, burning with an anger that wants to explode, but also trying as hard as he can to do the right thing, urges that sometimes are in complete opposition to one another. The growers he's up against are less well developed, portrayed as one dimensional, solely bad people, despite one's son saying that his father isn't a bad guy and the expository speech of another telling Jack about the pressures of being a grape farmer. Nothing in the grower's characters proves they are anything but greedy, nasty, brutish human beings who aren't averse to killing people, if not directly, then at least with full knowledge of the result of their actions. Jack's late father is portrayed as having had the courage to pursue what he knew was right for the people he employed, for the land, and for his own conscience, the diametric opposite of all the other growers. Only Jack shows any nuance whatsoever. The unrest and air of barely suppressed violence, along with the appearance of Chavez and his determination to keep the cause nonviolent, is quite well done and illuminates a piece of modern history that so many do not know about. The ending of the story, while releasing some of the pent up pressure, still captures the cost to so many, of this fight for their lives. This is a political, fast paced, and historically accurate thriller of a read. show less

The Road to Delano is many things but most of all it’s the story of a young man who thinks he knows how his life is going to play out only to learn that things aren’t always as they appear. The book starts with the story of a card playing man from New England who decides he has to get out of his small town and he gambles his way to California. There he wins enough to buy a spread. He meets a woman, builds a house and they have a son. He has promised to give up his gambling but as he show more notes, any farmer is a gambling man.

The star of the book is Jack Duncan – the son of the founder – and all Jack wants is to graduate high school and go to college and play baseball. He and his best friend Adrian have had this plan for a while and they don’t want anything to get in the way of it. Jack’s father had died when he was just a kid but now one of his dad’s friends has come to him to tell him that perhaps his dad’s death was not what it seemed. Jack’s mother isn’t talking so he decides to find out for himself. This man also gives him his father’s playing cards.

Jack’s coming of age is set against the background of the fight for rights for the grape pickers as they start to unionize. The efforts of Cesar Chavez divided the town and had impacts on Jack’s life that he could not begin to understand. His best friend Adrian is the son of one of the picketing workers so even their friendship was frowned upon by many in town.

The book is rich in detail about the lives on both sides of this great divide – the planters and the pickers. The characters are well drawn and real. I knew very little about this piece of history so it was enlightening to say the least to go back in time through the eyes of the people in this well written novel. I say it all the time but I love when a book takes me somewhere new so I can then go learn something. This book left me very thoughtful and it is certainly a book for these divided times. show less

With thanks to the LibraryThing Early Reviewers scheme, I received an unabridged (14 hours!) recording of John DeSimone's Road to Delano, originally published in 2019. I was able to listen to some of the historical novel on a recent road trip. At first, I was not taken by the narrator (Ramon de Ocampo): I thought, "Oh! I cannot take 14 hours of this!" But it turned out that de Ocampo was a wise casting choice due to the (Mexican) Spanish that's sprinkled throughout (although I noted show more inconsistencies in what sort of "accent" was employed when Spanish words are pronounced). (Actually, I must note that I very much dislike the tendency of audiobook readers to take on different "voices" when they're reading conversations. Here, the women's voices are especially ineffective.) What ended up bothering me even more were the digressions--the moments of incredible detail (whether about a baseball game or a card came or a conversation) that just did not sustain my attention when read aloud. (They may be fine in printed form.) I was also not impressed by the prose that inclines toward the purple or by the occasional redundancies (I can't recall them all, since I was driving, but I made mental note of an open window being closed [can you close a closed window?] and a character striding alone through a doorway [is the "alone" necessary?]). Anyway, a better editor could have cleaned up those areas--and could perhaps have tightened the text altogether. My plan is to try to track down a library copy of the printed book, because I don't want to spend the time required to listen to the end of the story: since I feel the story must be more effective in written than spoken form, I'd like to get it over with more quickly.

And I'm aware that I'm commenting on my responses to the (listened-to) text--instead of sharing anything about the story itself. (I'm curious now to read some other reviews by way of noting what they emphasize.) In an ideal world, the sorts of things I mentioned here would support the storyline--instead of detracting from it. show less

Jack is a high school baseball player with dreams of making it big in the major leagues. However, life tends to get in the way. His best friend is thrown in jail. Plus, he finds out his deceased father was actually murdered. He must find the strength to save his family, his friend, the vineyard and see his father’s murderer in jail.

Jack is such a tough character. I enjoyed his spunk and determination. Nothing is going to stop him. I also enjoyed the wild ride the author puts you through. show more The migrant workers strike, the small town politics and even Cesar Chavez making an appearance are enough to keep the tension running high all the way through this book.

This is a fierce and powerful novel, basically about struggling through life when it throws you curve balls! Don’t miss this provocative tale!

I received this novel from the author for a honest review. show less