Kerouac’s ‘Mexican Girl’ brought to life in ‘Mañana Means Heaven’
Brooklyn BookBeat: Author to speak at Brooklyn Book Festival
As Jack Kerouac described her, she was “the cutest little Mexican girl” who happened across his path at a bus stop in Bakersfield, Calif., and became “Terry” in his classic novel, “On the Road.” In reality, Kerouac scholars knew she was a woman named Bea Franco, but despite many efforts over the fog of years, none could find her. Until now.
Tim Z. Hernandez, an award-winning author and poet, spent years building and sifting through a list of nearly 200 Bea Francos across the United States, searching for the one whose brief romance with a young, wandering writer was immortalized in the book that defined the Beat Generation. As chance would have it, Hernandez found her living in his native San Joaquin Valley barely a mile from his own home.
“Manaña Means Heaven” (University of Arizona Press) is a combination of fiction and memory, based on the conversations Hernandez shared with the elderly Franco and his own research. It is a story of that 1947 romance as told from her side, the events that led up to her meeting “Jackie” as she fled an abusive husband and the complications that caused their lives to drift toward different paths.
Hernandez will appear in Brooklyn on Sept. 22 to discuss his book as part of the Brooklyn Book Festival.