Woman whose fling with Jack Kerouac inspired him to publish On The Road dies aged 92



Inspiration: Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road' was picked up to be published years after he wrote it when an excerpt entitled 'Terry, the Mexican girl' was published in 1956 - Terry - real name - Bea Kozera died on Thursday aged 92

Beatrice Kozera, the Los Angeles-born woman whose fleeting relationship with novelist Jack Kerouac was chronicled in 'On the Road,' - the book that defined a generation - has died. She was 92.



The woman also known as Bea Franco and to readers as 'Terry, the Mexican girl' died on Thursday in Lakewood of natural causes, family friend Tim Hernandez said on Monday.



Kozera learned only a few years ago that her 15-day relationship with Kerouac in the farm-worker labor camps of Selma in 1947 was featured in his famous Beat Generation novel and eventually a Hollywood movie, in which actress Alic Braga played her, Hernandez said.



Hernandez tracked down Kozera while he was researching her story for a book due to be released later this month called “Manana Means Heaven.”



He said he interviewed Kozera several times after finding letters and a postcard she had written to Kerouac at the New York Public Library. He showed them to her family, who recognized her handwriting.



'As far as she was concerned she was a normal, ordinary person who at one point in her life met a man,' Hernandez said. 'She never knew that this gentleman Kerouac ever became anything.'

Kozera spent most of her early years following her farmworker family in California’s fields and eventually settled in Fresno.

This photo from 1941 and provided by writer Tim Z. Hernandez on behalf of the Bea Kozera Estate shows Beatrice Kozera and her son Albert Franco. Kozera, the woman whose fleeting relationship with novelist Jack Kerouac appeared in 'On The Road' - this photo was taken 6 years before Kozera and the novelist met This photo from 1947 and provided by writer Tim Z. Hernandez on behalf of the Bea Kozera Estate shows Beatrice Kozera, left, with friend Angie in Selma, California - in the same year she met Kerouac

Hollywood Inspiration: Alice Braga as Terry in the 2012 film version of On the Road - The real Terry, Beatrice Kozera died last Thursday aged 92

The Bible of the Beat Generation, 'On the Road', was rejected multiple times after Kerouac famously wrote it in one frenetic three-week period at his typewriter.

It finally caught the attention of a publisher when an excerpt called, 'The Mexican Girl' was featured in a 1956 edition of the Paris Review.

It recalls one of Jack's first adventures in the novel - his encounter with a Chicana laborer, who is fleeing an abusive husband, leaving her two children behind.

That woman, Beatrice Kozera/Bea Franco, called Terry in 'On the Road', spent 15 days with Jack, picking cotton to make enough money for her to recover her children and move to New York with them.

Beat Generation Hero: Jack Kerouac met Beatric Kozera in 1947 in California after she had left her abusive husband - (left) is Alic Braga's image on the front cover a poster for the 2012 film version of the 1957 novel



Film Version: Sam Riley, (left), as Sal Paradise/Jack Kerouac and Alice Braga, as Terry/Beatrice Kozera in a scene from the film, 'On the Road,' directed by Walter Salles

When their time together came to an end, Jack decided to leave her behind.

The moment was captured in On the Road when the character of Sal Paradise says goodbye to Terry - departing with one of the most famous lines in the iconic novel.



'We turned at a dozen paces,' wrote Kerouac in the book, 'for love is a duel, and looked at each other for the last time.'



Inspired by those haunting words, American Book Award Winner Tim Z. Hernandez resolved three years ago that he would write his own fictional account of what occurred after Kerouac left her behind.



Further Fiction: 'Manana Means Heaven' by Tim Z. Hernandez is a fictional imagining of Beatric Kozera's life after her meeting with Kerouac inspired by three years of interviews Hernandez conducted with her

'When I was done reading that chapter I closed the book and I stared up the road,' he said.



'I thought of Terry - the real Terry, that is - Bea Franco, 'the Mexican girl'; I wondered who she was right then, I wondered whatever became of her. This was the beginning ... or, at least, my beginning.'



His research led him to the New York Public Library where he discovered letters exchanged between the pair in the years after Kerouac returned to Manhattan where he, Alan Ginsberg and William Burroughs were at the vanguard of The Beat Generation and its Bohemian lifestyle.



Furthermore, he discovered that Bea Franco was still alive and living only a mile from his home in Fresno, California.



Hernandez then spent the next two years interviewing her producing his own novel 'Manana Means Heaven', which she was able to hold in her hands just one week before she passed away.



'When I first told her that there were over twenty Kerouac biographies that had included her name, her reply was, 'Why? My life wasn’t so special.' And then she’d chuckle,' said Hernandez on his blog.



'During the years it took me to write 'Manana Means Heaven,' as any writer will tell you, I lived with her in my mind and heart.



'And then sometimes I’d speak with her in person and she’d remind me, in her own unassuming way, that it was simply a small part of who she was, in a life that spanned nearly a century.



'On this melancholy occasion, I think of the curious way she signed off her letters, to Kerouac, to her husband and to her friends: 'I REMAIN AS EVER, Bea'.



Describing her in an interview with Beat Scene Magazine as a 'Chicana Mona Lisa figure' - Hernandez felt that her influence on Kerouac and the eventual publication of 'On the Road' ensured her status as a literary figure of note.

Hero Worship: Jack Kerouac's life was an inspiration for Tim Hernandez (right) and he will publish his book on Beatrice Kozera imminently



'I'm referring to the fact that it was 'The Mexican Girl' story that opened the doors,' said Hernandez.



'Because of this I felt she deserved her story told. Obviously, her experience and concerns would've been starkly different from Kerouacs during that time in Fall of 1947.



'Especially for a woman of color in that part of the world at that time.'



Furiously written on a typewriter over a three-week long creative binge in 1951, Jack Kerouac's On the Road is the seminal portrayal of 'Beat' culture and its spiritual quest for expression.



'The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, desirous of everything at the same time,' he wrote in 'On the Road' which was published in 1957.



When finally published, the novel catapulted Kerouac to literary fame, as he was acclaimed as an innovator.



The Beat Generation became mainstream, with Greenwich Village and San Francisco becoming its centers.



Kerouac's process was almost as famous as his work. His method was to write spontaneously

by threading one huge roll of paper into his typewriter and pounding away at the keys.

