Dimas

The Santa Fe Railroad laid tracks from the east and the west beneath the southern slopes of the San Gabriel Mountains in 1887, meeting in San Dimas and opening the area to more than sparse settlement. The Rancho San Jose formerly included San Dimas in a Spanish land grant of 23,000 acres, given in 1837 to Don Ygnacio Palomares and Don Ricardo Vejar by the king of Spain. The new town became integral to the huge citrus industry that stretched for 65 miles from Pasadena to the Inland Empire. Residential development renewed growth in the 1950s, yet much of todays designated historic portion of this eastern Los Angeles County community remains the same as it was in the early 1900s. Part of the Lemon Association packinghouse still stands, once the largest such packinghouse in the world. San Dimas is a vital city thriving in the midst of Southern Californias rush through the 21st century but is also rich in the historical building blocks that created prosperity in the greater Los Angeles region.

El buen ladrón, llamado Dimas, se encuentra en sus últimos momentos de existencia. Encerrado en su celda a lado de Gestas, su cómplice, y en el camino al Calvario a lado del Cristo; va recorriendo su vida en recuerdos, mientras con su mirada no deja de observar las injusticias que se hacen al joven Rabí, al que apenas y conoció; y en un momento de profundo arrepentimiento le pide que se acuerde de él cuando esté en su reino.

"Groyon's familiarity with the Bacolod matrix of manner--surreally rich scions, weird personalities, outrageously decadent lifestyles--has endowed him with the rich material to mine and/or undermine for his fiction." --Alfred A. Yuson