Vanessa Blakeslee: 3 books

Growing up as the only daughter of a wealthy landowner in Santiago de Cali, Colombia, teenaged Mercedes Martinez knows a world of maids, armed guards, and private drivers. When she falls in love with Manuel, a fiery young activist with a passion for his faith and his country, she begins to understand...

From the unforgiving surf of Costa Rica to hidden vineyards in the South of France, the stories in Perfect Conditions span the globe, and the characters often struggle to find control in unrelenting circumstances: a deep sea fisherman discovers he may not be allowed to return home when his contract...

A single mother rents a fundamentalist preacher’s carriage house. A pop star contemplates suicide in the hotel where Janis Joplin died. A philandering ex-pat doctor gets hooked on morphine while reeling from his wife’s death. And in the title story, a train engineer, after running over a young girl...