Biography
Thomas Sanchez is a descendant of Spanish immigrants and Portuguese cattlemen dating back four generations in California to the 1800s Gold Rush. Sanchez was born days after his father was killed at the age of 21 in the Battle of Tarawa during World War II. Sanchez’s first book, RABBIT BOSS,("A novel of epic dimensions, marked by commanding sense of place and mix of politics and poetry." New York Times), the hundred year saga of a California Indian tribe, was begun at the age of 20 while Sanchez was working on cattle ranches in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
In the 1960's he witnessed the era's major social and political events while in the San Francisco Bay Area-- the strikes of the Farm Workers Union, the tumultuous U.C. Berkeley's Free Speech Movement, the clashes between anti-Vietnam war protesters and police, and the counter-culture explosion of San-Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. At the end of the decade Sanchez moved to a mountain village in Spain, to finish RABBIT BOSS, which was cited by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the best books of the 20th century.
By the early 1970s Sanchez had returned to America, where he was involved in the siege of Wounded Knee in the Black Hills of South Dakota, site of the infamous massacre of Sioux Indians. Sanchez ran supplies of food to Indians trapped inside the town of Wounded Knee, which had been surrounded by national armed forces with shoot to kill orders--a partial account of this was published in a commemorative American bi-centennial collection with Henry Miller, who Sanchez knew.
Moving to Southern California, Sanchez wrote ZOOT-SUIT MURDERS ("A vivid tale of political intrigue and romance by a master of pictorial detail." Chicago Tribune) Set in the barrios and war-time mean streets of Los Angeles, the novel explored a chaotic world of anti-Communist hysteria, bizarre religious cults, tough gangs and undercover government agents. After the publication of ZOOT-SUIT MURDERS Sanchez received a Guggenheim Award for his writings.
In the 1980s Sanchez lived in Key West. During that decade he traveled throughout the American tropics and was in harm's way during the civil wars of Guatemala and El Salvador, where he traversed both political and physical jungle landscapes with a real life cast of characters--from guerilla fighters to defrocked renegade priests, to bible toting CIA spooks and hard-bitten war journalists. Much of this made its way into Sanchez's MILE ZERO ("A holy terror of a book...immense power and passion, about the end of the American road and the beginnings of a new world." Washington Post) This panoramic novel spanned the period of 19th century ship-wreckers to modern day drug pirates and gun-runners. MILE ZERO was developed as a film by Francis Coppola's Zoetrope and MGM, starring Andy Garcia: Sanchez wrote the screenplay.
During the 1990s Sanchez lived in Paris, Provence and Mallorca, the setting of DAY OF THE BEES ("A literary landmark. A novel of unforgettable power about love and war, art and freedom." Le Monde) The novel celebrates passion and creativity as it explores the hidden lives of a famous Spanish painter and his French lover, a woman transformed from an artist's muse into a heroic Resistance fighter. The French Republic awarded Sanchez the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres for his body of work.
At the beginning of the new century Sanchez returned to the tropics for his novel, KING BONGO, set against the glamour and intrigue of pre-revolutionary 1950s Havana, where Cuban and American cultures collided with geo-political consequence.(An exotic portrait of sex, violence, corruption and conspiracy in Cuba." Washington Post).
Mr. Sanchez's sixth novel will be published in 2008 and a film documentary, A FIRE OF WORDS, based on the life and writings of Sanchez, is currently being shot in Key West, Miami, San Francisco, Mallorca and Paris. DAY OF THE BEES film rights have been optioned by Ahasverus Productions, to be directed by Jerzy Kromolowski, who scripted the Sean Penn/Jack Nicholson film, THE PLEDGE.
