| Author: | James Carlos Blake | ISBN: | 9780802189431 |
| Publisher: | Grove Atlantic | Publication: | March 14, 2017 |
| Imprint: | Grove Press | Language: | English |
| Author: | James Carlos Blake |
| ISBN: | 9780802189431 |
| Publisher: | Grove Atlantic |
| Publication: | March 14, 2017 |
| Imprint: | Grove Press |
| Language: | English |
A gritty, raw, bare-knuckled debut collection of stories set in the borderlands of the world and mind.
In this extraordinary collection of short works, James Carlos Blake, “one of the greatest chroniclers of the mythical American outlaw life” and author of In the Rogue Blood and the Wolfe family series of border noirs, journeys from the nineteenth-century Mexican frontier to the borderlands of today (Entertainment Weekly).
Borderlands begins with an introductory piece of memoir, called “The Outsider,” about Blake’s own straddling of worlds and identities. In the following eight haunting stories, we meet Don Sebastián Cabrillo Mayor Cortés y Mendoza, a powerful landowner reduced to howling at the moon from behind the bars of a mental institution; an illegal immigrant in Florida who must reckon with his emotional turmoil after being robbed by a fellow Mexican; a Texas woman orphaned by disease and desertion, making her way into a violent world of men; and many more who pass through the shadows of the borderlands. Bold, honest, and humane, these pieces represent some of the best writing from one of the most original and authentic voices in contemporary fiction.
“Blake writes with a fearless precision and a ruthless sensibility, his prose is spare and tough, and his descriptions detailed and cinematic. This is gritty, raw, bare-knuckled fiction, blazing with an extraordinary kind of violence, and certainly not for the faint of heart.” —Publishers Weekly
A gritty, raw, bare-knuckled debut collection of stories set in the borderlands of the world and mind.
In this extraordinary collection of short works, James Carlos Blake, “one of the greatest chroniclers of the mythical American outlaw life” and author of In the Rogue Blood and the Wolfe family series of border noirs, journeys from the nineteenth-century Mexican frontier to the borderlands of today (Entertainment Weekly).
Borderlands begins with an introductory piece of memoir, called “The Outsider,” about Blake’s own straddling of worlds and identities. In the following eight haunting stories, we meet Don Sebastián Cabrillo Mayor Cortés y Mendoza, a powerful landowner reduced to howling at the moon from behind the bars of a mental institution; an illegal immigrant in Florida who must reckon with his emotional turmoil after being robbed by a fellow Mexican; a Texas woman orphaned by disease and desertion, making her way into a violent world of men; and many more who pass through the shadows of the borderlands. Bold, honest, and humane, these pieces represent some of the best writing from one of the most original and authentic voices in contemporary fiction.
“Blake writes with a fearless precision and a ruthless sensibility, his prose is spare and tough, and his descriptions detailed and cinematic. This is gritty, raw, bare-knuckled fiction, blazing with an extraordinary kind of violence, and certainly not for the faint of heart.” —Publishers Weekly
