Here’s an excerpt from Robert “Carlos” Fuentes’ self-published book, “The Vacation: a Teenage Migrant Farmworker’s Experience Picking Cherries in Michigan”—a coming-of-age story that intertwines the bonds of family and friends, emphasizes the importance of heritage, captures the sweetness of first love, and showcases the quiet dignity of hard work. According to Rubén O. Martinez, professor emeritis at Michigan State University’s Julia Samora Research Institute, Fuentes’ story, which is set in 1969 not long before the introduction of the mechanized cherry shaker, “provides a window to family, religion, race relations, and short-term community life among migrant farm working families through the experiences of an adolescent boy who is coming of age in a migrant camp and the orchards of cherry growers.” Fuentes’ book “The Vacation” is available at Leelanau County bookstores.
