Article: The full El Monte: defying convention, Salvador Plascencia has written one of the host talked-about literary debuts in years.(CULTURE)(Biography)

EL MONTE IS COOKING IN 95-degree heat. The San Gabriel Mountains are covered in smog, and the San Bernardino Freeway is covered in cars, the sky above it quivering with traffic exhaust. The expanse of flatland trapped in between--a yawning grid of housing developments and strip malls packed with Mexican markets, dumpling restaurants, and the kind of bars that don't need a happy hour to get people to come in and drink--bears no trace of the 18th-century refuge of cool rivers and breezy meadows that comforted weary travelers and prospecting migrants. In the 1850S, El Monte was the last stop on the Santa Fe Trail, as far west as any Easterner with wanderlust needed to go.

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