“I heartily recommend that readers check out the novels of Chester Himes.”
That’s what Naomi Hirahara writes in her extensive author’s notes at the end of “Evergreen,” about Nisei returning from the World War Two internment camps to a changed L.A. "Evergreen" is the sequel to Hirahara's excellent "Clark & Division." Himes’ books play a role in Hirahara’s novel set in post-war Los Angeles.
You can read more about Himes in James Sallis’ deeply detailed biography, “Chester Himes: A Life” I’ve read Sallis novels “Drive” and “Bluebottle” but plan on finding “Difficult Lives, Hitching Rides: Essays on Noir,” exploring writers like Himes and Jim Thompson. I brought Sallis to Wyoming a couple decades ago to work with student writers.
Hirahara's author's notes are always lengthy and detailed. In "Evergreen," she recommends books on the the era's African-American presence in L.A. She suggests Isabel Wilkerson’s “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration,” “Snapshots” from the Community Writers Group of Los Angeles, and Chuck Haddix’s “Bird: The Life and Music of Charlie Parker.”
I added them all to my reading list. As is the case with many writers, L.A. has a hold on me through books and movies. The crime novels of Raymond Chandler, Michael Connelly, Walter Mosley, and James Ellroy. Other writers, such as the almost-forgotten Jon Fante, black-listed Dalton Trumbo, and poet/mailman Charles Bukowski. (Editor's note: Fante and Trumbo, two troublemakers with Colorado roots). The poems of Wanda Coleman, often called "the unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles," always hit me in the gut. There are other writers as well as musicians such as Bird and the many rockers who have come and gone. The Doors, Joni Mitchell, Dr. Dre, Red Hot Chili Peppers, etc. And “Chinatown,” that lovely, sorrowful movie.
"Evergreen" is a compelling mystery. I learned about the many injustices inflicted upon U.S. citizens yanked from their homes and schools and shops in Los Angeles for winters behind barbed wire in placed such as Heart Mountain, Wyoming, which I have visited many times. People in Wyoming, such as the late Sen. Alan Simpson of Cody, supported the building of a museum on the site, a museum which duplicates one of the camp's wooden barracks. Simpson and internee and late congressman and secretary of transportation U.S. Senator Norman Mineta were Boy Scouts during the war, Simpson finding a way for the Scouts to work together, inside and outside the wire.Hirahara also explores the Nisei who served as U.S. soldiers in Italy during the war. Many were killed. Some returned with severe cases of PTSD, which also figures in the book's plot.
I have “The Real Cool Killers” on my desk. Published in 1959 by Berkeley Medallion, a 50-cent paperback that a second-hand store marked down to 35. It’s the kind you can slip into your pocket. The cover shows Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones chasing a scantily-clad woman. They are all running somewhere down L.A.’s mean streets, some of which take you to the beach and some to certain death. That’s the cool thing, isn’t it? You can say mean streets and New York City in the same breath. But it’s such a weird juxtaposition with sunny, glossy L.A. I hear Beach Boys’ “Surf City” at the same time “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown” rolls like an angry wave through my memory.
