Along These Highways

Along These Highways
By Rene S Perez
152 pp. / 6.00 in x 9.00 in / 2012
Paper (978-0-8165-3010-6)

Series
- Camino del Sol

Related Interest
- Fiction

Rene Perez has the ability to stop time. In fact, time stops as soon as you start reading one of his short stories. You find yourself transported into the minds and lives of people you thought you

Surprise endings, irony, and dark humor ensure the success of this collection among short-fiction fans as well as readers in the Southwest.

—Booklist

Perez shines a high beam on lives never in the spotlight. His stories
abduct you, sweep you across an America you never knew existed,
and in the end change you. Good stories do that. A wonderful
debut.

—Sandra Cisneros

didnÃ†t know. Suddenly they are your best friends.

They live in Texas. Most of them are Hispanic. But their problems are universal.

Like Alfredo, driving home from Dallas to Greenton with the body of his friend "Frankie" Ochoa in the back of his hearse and his son Ramon ready to drive if Alfredo's eyesight fails again.

Or Joey, just back from basic training and ready to ship out with his Marine platoon. He's having beers with his best friend J.R. at Flojo's, a bar outside of Greenton run by Liz and Vicente, "the toughest couple in town."

Or Benny, who drops into Flojo's for the first time in years and finds his one-time friend Gumby drinking himself into oblivion. Turns out Gumby's luck is even worse than Benny's.

Or Virginia, the schoolteacher who's trying to become better educated in the hope that her son who went to Stanford will come back home to Corpus Christi. Or Eric, who spent all his money on two flashy wheels for his car and put them both on the passenger side so that they'll impress everyone on the sidewalk as he passes. Or Andy, who breaks into a home he's always wanted to see from the inside.

You'll want to know them all. And you will count yourself fortunate to have met them.

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