Sacrament

De: Susan Straight

Narrado por: Stacy Gonzalez, Marisol Ramirez, Shaun Taylor-Corbett, Jasmin Walker

The Washington Post, A Book to Watch

Library Journal, A Title to Watch

From National Book Award finalist Susan Straight, a captivating new novel about a group of nurses fighting through the first year of a pandemic and the beloved California community they will risk their lives to protect

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 the nurses struggle with the skyrocketing number of sick patients, Cherisse’s daughter goes missing. Grief’s friend Johnny Frias, a California Highway Patrol officer, joins the search to find her, and the resulting journey leads to new love and loss, pushing all our characters to their breaking points. Brilliantly highlighting both the quiet heroism and extraordinary bravery of first responders, Sacrament once again proves that Susan Straight is the “essential voice in American writing and in writing of the West” (The New York Times).

©2025 Susan Straight (P)2025 Recorded Books

Our Angels Who Suffered

Publishers have been avoiding the trauma of the pandemic, sensing that the pain is still too raw for readers– a reluctance reminiscent of the post-Vietnam era. However, Susan Straight's powerful novel, “Sacrament” unflinchingly examines the invisible toll the pandemic inflicted on essential workers and their families.

While many of us were fortunate enough to remain secluded and avoid public spaces, confronting the challenges of isolation, our "essential workers" faced a starkly different reality. Author Susan Straight, who lived near a hospital—a major site of suffering during that period—spoke often with nurses who relayed the constant, unrelenting misery of every shift. These individuals stood as the heroes on the front line of this war.

Straight's powerful work, "Sacrament," focuses on the lives of three ICU nurses—Larette Embers, Cherrise Martinez, and Marisol Manalang—during the COVID-19 pandemic. To shield their families from the virus, these nurses lived in close quarters, enduring stifling conditions in trailers near the hospital. This necessary separation meant they were isolated from their loved ones and also prevented them from sharing the daily, agonizing realities they faced: witnessing patients, friends, and neighbors die alone. A particularly moving element of the story involves Larette singing to comatose patients. These were songs requested by the patients' loved ones, offering a final, remote connection—a form of sacrament in place of last rites—at a time when the pandemic's end seemed impossibly far off.

A major plotline is the disappearance of Cherrise’s 15-year-old daughter, Raquel. After running away from the Coachella date farm where she was staying, her absence requires a search involving California Highway Patrol officer Johnny Frias, a character who also appeared in Straight's previous novel, “Mecca.” Raquel is desperate because she has been unable to reach her mother and, in defiance of her mother's explicit prohibition against contacting her, fears that her mother might be succumbing to COVID-19. Her desperate search is a mirror of the nurses' isolation—it highlights how the pandemic fractured essential human connections.

Susan Straight's novel, “Mecca,” was my favorite book of 2022. With “Sacrament” she continues her powerful exploration of overlooked communities and the lives of those who inhabit Southern California, a hallmark praised by the Los Angeles Times when it proclaimed her 'the bard of overlooked California'.

“Sacrament” is an emotionally profound and critically acclaimed work that provides an unflinching look at a harrowing historical period. It grounds the immense tragedy of the pandemic in the immediate, visceral details of the nurses' restricted lives, women who were denied the option of isolation. By transforming the clinical isolation unit into a space that is both sacred and agonizing, The collective trauma of the pandemic finds a devastating, personal voice in the lives of Larette, Cherrise, and Marisol. It is a terrifying, beautiful novel that insists we not look away. Straight performs a kind of final ritual for this terrifying moment. This book solidifies her standing as one of our most vital chroniclers of contemporary American life.