The Cigarette Girl on the Tango

The Cigarette Girl on the Tango, D. J. Phinney’s follow-up to The Anaheim Beauties Valencia Queen, unveils another hushed-up chapter of California history. In the depths of the Great Depression, the Santa Ana River floods of 1938 roar through Orange County, destroying, Atwood, a river-edge bracero hamlet. 19-year-old Willie O'Toole searches for his missing love, Elena Valenzuela, almost certain she has drowned. At a tamale shop near the western edge of rural Santa Ana, he meets Loretta, who looks exactly like Elena without her innocence. She claims to be Elena’s sister. But some facts aren’t adding up. Then Willie learns Elena’s corpse washed up onshore at Seal Beach, then called Sin City , the red-light district and gambling mecca of Orange County. He follows Elena’s trail to the gambling ships offshore. There, Willie’s horrified to learn his love, Elena, didn’t drown and that Loretta isn’t who she claimed to be. Steeped in more true but hidden history, once more the story echoes the present and strips the makeup off our candy-coated past. Enjoy a journey to a California few people remember, where a thin veneer of innocence masked an underworld of lies.