The Real Woman Behind Keroauc's 'Mexican Girl'

Poet, novelist, and performance artist Tim Z. Hernandez is receiving critical acclaim for Mañana Means Heaven, a novel based on the life of Bea Franco, the "Mexican Girl" in the American Beatnik generation classic, "On the Road." The iconic writer Jack Kerouac has a chapter about the time he spent in a relationship with a Chicana farm worker, who was fleeing an abusive husband and who had left her two children behind. Kerouac called her Terry, the Mexican girl, but it was Bea Franco.