This Time Tomorrow Book

Gilbert Gaeta, a forklift operator in a dairy, can barely make payments on the house where he lives with his thirteen-year-old daughter, Ana. When a month of overtime shifts comes his way, he begins to envision a new life, one in which he can save enough money for an engagement ring and finally propose to his girlfriend, Joyce. He works the night shift, exhausted but making good money, and it’s looking like his plan will work. Then Ana is chased home from the Laundromat by bullies, and she begins pushing him to buy a washer and dryer. Gilbert tries to stay firm, but when Ana’s trouble follows her to school, the pressure mounts to put her first, and delay his future with Joyce.

Joyce, who at thirty-six has never lived on her own, can’t move out of her father’s traditional Mexican house until she is married. Feeling her life with Gilbert slipping away, she starts to despair. And then one day, standing before her impressive collection of vintage purses, she sees a way to take control of her future. But it won’t be easy.

Writing from three distinct and equally moving perspectives, award-winning author Michael Jaime-Becerra tells a story about the painful balance between love and responsibility. An intimate and poignant first novel, This Time Tomorrow casts a new light on Southern California’s working class and its struggles for happiness.

Publishers Weekly

The struggling Mexican-American families depicted in Jaime-Becerra’s debut will strike a chord with readers, but the intermittently moving narrative too often gets stuck in the spin cycle. Since his wife left him, Gilbert Gaeta has been supporting his 13-year-old daughter, Ana, with night shifts at a local dairy. Though he can barely pay his mortgage, he dreams of saving up to buy an engagement ring for his girlfriend, Joyce, so she’ll move out of her father’s house and in with him. But when Ana starts to complain about being bullied at the Laundromat, Gaeta must choose between his dreams and buying Ana the washer and dryer she wants. Meanwhile, Joyce looks after her controlling father and secretly plans to sell her beloved purse collection so she and Gaeta can start their life together on solid ground. Despite its 1988 setting, Gaeta and Joyce’s struggles feel current, and their working-class lives solidly lived, though Joyce’s sections suffer from the absence of well-rounded characters and her clunkily handled devotion to her purses. It’s a decent enough first book, but nothing about it really stands out. (Feb.)