"There was no arguing. This was family. Enrique was the closest thing I'd ever had to a grandfather."
This quote is emblematic of the novel as a whole. Taken out of context, it is almost completely lacking in importance or insight. Even within context, it is not significant due to its particular content. This quote is narrated by a woman who is neither more significant nor less significant than any other narrative voice. Mecca is essentially a plotless story that derives its interest from a theme far more than a storyline. One of the themes that are explored through its rather large cast of characters is the necessity of family. The argument in this case is over the unpleasantness of having to drive over a hundred miles in temperatures over a hundred degrees. These are the kind of circumstances that give justification to even the slightest argument raised in opposition. The one argument that raises above even allowing the possibility of argument is being there when family needs you. In Enrique's case, he needs help with a sick granddaughter in the year of Covid.
"And every day, when I rode past Bee Canyon, I thought about the human I buried there, back when I was 21. I’d never told anyone what happened in Bee Canyon. Not even my father, who might be the only one who would understand."
Another important theme that unifies the disparate narratives explores the impact that keeping secrets has on lives. The closest the storyline comes to involving an outright plot is the way that Johnny's secret is divulged here very early in the story only the reader will come to connect him with the stories of others. But his secret is much more than a mere plot mechanism as its significance extends well beyond the connection to others. The body Johnny buries is that of a white man. As his last name hints, Johnny is Hispanic. Johnny is also an officer with the California Highway Patrol which only serves to complicate the racism and xenophobia he must face every day. All these tie into the loose connective tissue of the storyline. This a novel about the darker underbelly of Southern California far away from the both tinsel of Hollywood and the gritty streets of the inner cities. These characters inhabit a literal landscape where secrets can be buried and remain uncovered for decades. But this landscape is populated by characters, Johnny foremost among them, who can't bury their secrets inside themselves.
"Dante was supposed to keep a quarantine journal...he still tried to write in the extra notebook his mother had brought from Rite Aid when school stopped back in March.
He was alone for at least four hours a day now, mostly at night, since his mother had to stay in an RV somebody had donated for nurses to live near the hospital because she couldn't come home or she'd bring the virus to him and his father. He imagined it coating her, the people coughing and the respirators that she said pushed clouds of droplets into the air by the beds."
At a certain level, Mecca will likely forever be a part of that group of books published in the early 2020s categorized as "Covid Fiction" or "Quarantine Novels." The pandemic hangs heavy over the narrative, but just as the novel is devoid of a plot, so it is also lacking in the overarching intensity to adequately fit it with such a narrow generic spectrum. The story of a kid named Dante and the physical separation from their mother who is a nurse is just one section of the novel's big puzzle which the reader is urged to fit together without the easy guidepost of plot mechanics. In some ways, this is a novel that almost feels more like a collection of short stories that are connected. The individual tales being told do not all come together seamlessly at the end in a magical climax that explains how everyone's tale fits into one larger narrative. The reader is pressed to figure out how the Covid-19 experience of Dante has to do with that of Enrique's granddaughter and what, if anything, the secret burial by Johnny Frias which took place so many years before has to do with any of them.
