American Tropic

Thomas Sanchez, fifth generation Californian born days before his father was killed in World War II. Sent as a boy to orphanage/boarding school with Native, Black, White and Latino Americans. In the 1960s participated in iconic events -- Farm Workers Strikes, tumultuous U.C. Berkeley Free Speech Protest, counter-culture explosion of San
Francisco Haight-Ashbury. In the 1970s ran strategic supplies through Government armed forces with shoot-to-kill orders surrounding Indians under siege in Wounded Knee, South Dakota, site of the infamous 1890s massacre.
 
Sanchez lived seven years below the poverty line while dedicated to writing the generational epic, Rabbit Boss. The novel is listed by State Librarian of California Emeritus, Kevin Starr, as "one of the three or four finest novels…