BOYLE HEIGHTS 1939 is a powerful and emotional historical fiction story, a Political Noir story for today. Brilliantly using fictional characters to involve facts about NAZIs in America and their Silver Shirt vigilantes before World War II — which reflects the experience of I.C.E. raids in America today — helps Americans deal with the collective trauma and sense of powerlessness being experienced while enduring the violent I.C.E. raids in Blue cities.

The Boyle Heights community of Los Angeles in 1939 was a vibrant diversified area because of the worst redlining in Los Angeles, with strong Mexican, Jewish, and other cultural and ethnic communities. That diversity attracted the hate and ire of the large NAZI presence in Los Angeles, especially the NAZI Silver Shirt vigilantes who violently enforced the national repatriation drives to remove Mexicans, whether citizens or not, from the USA because they were blamed then, as now again, for taking jobs from deserving white Americans. They were blamed for worsening the Great Depression. 

Further, the American NAZI Silver Legion's Silver Shirt vigilantes, inspired by Hitler and his Brownshirts in NAZI Germany at the beginning of the Holocaust, also attacked Jews to remove them from America (antisemitism was prevalent in pre-World War II America).

NAZIs had a big parade in November 1938 to celebrate Hitler’s Crystal Night attack on German Jews. The parade leader Hermann Schwinn publicly declared at their parade, “Within five years, we will see Jews dangling from telephone posts and trees!”

That parade was in the streets of Los Angeles, California.

THE STORY: 20-year-old Mexican Juan Ignacio Herrera Martínez, working to send money to his widowed mother and younger siblings in Jalisco MX, was chased by the Silver Shirt vigilantes during their surge into Boyle Heights. Terrified and desperate, he dives into an unlocked door to hide. It is the dingy small one-room apartment of 65-year-old Michael Scott Whitney, a white man, widower, and a veteran of the Spanish American War.

Michael, armed with his old rifle, forces Juan out of his apartment until he hears breaking news on the radio that Jewish refugees were refused asylum in America. He is offended by the news, and recognizes that Juan, too, is a refugee seeking shelter.

He chooses to protect Juan.

The two spend the few days of the NAZI surge together in the that cramped apartment, bonding ... which is very unusual for a time when Mexicans and whites did not mix.

Originally, Michael sits watch, protecting Juan.

However, tragedy turns the tables. When Michael has a vicious heart attack, it becomes Juan's turn to protect Michael. Choosing to face possible discovery by the Silver Shirts, Juan seeks help for Michael to keep him alive.

In the end, the heavily-armed Silver Shirts and the lightly-armed Michael and Juan face tragedy.

BOYLE HEIGHTS 1939 is a very contained ("two people, one room" concept) story ready and available for consideration.