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After “American Nightmare” came out, Huskins and Quinn were contacted by an unlikely ally: the police chief in the Monterey Bay town of Seaside, Nick Borges.

Borges said he wanted her to know that she did have the backing of law enforcement, despite what her experience had been.

Valadao, whose parents emigrated from the Azores, speaks Portuguese and Spanish, as a result of growing up on a dairy farm alongside Mexican farmworkers, Borges said.

Borges isn’t offended by the mural, saying the creative response to the city’s municipal code helped create a better relationship among neighbors.

It projected him into the ranks of the country’s most innovative writers, drawing comparisons to contemporaries like Thomas Pynchon, Jorge Luis Borges and Vladimir Nabokov.