Set on our contemporary desert borderlands, Ana Castillo's wrenching narrative is largely told through the idiosyncratic voice of Regina. She's a middle-aged woman facing death on all sides as she tries to protect her nephew Gabo, an earnest young penitent hoping against all hope to find his disappeared father. Across the iconic Western landscape of basin and range, immigrants are vulnerable to amoral smugglers, gangsters spar over drug territory, and those who are supposed to uphold the law

—Ruben Martinez