Borderlands: Short Fictions

By James Carlos Blake

Winner of the Border Regional Library Association Southwest Book Award: A gritty, action-packed collection of short stories from a master of the American West.  Dolores and her mother have not seen Dolores’s daddy for five days. Dolores—whom daddy calls Sugargirl—leaps to greet him when she hears his heavy steps on the front porch. Daddy is drunk, battered, and smells of cheap perfume; his return is cut short when Momma chases him out of the house with a hot iron. A few years later, when Momma is dead and Daddy is serving a thirty-to-life stint in the state penitentiary, Dolores gets a letter addressed to Sugargirl. She is sixteen, on her own, and life will not get easier from here. This novella and the seven accompanying stories represent the finest short fiction of acclaimed author James Carlos Blake. While the tales span centuries and continents, the characters share a common trait: They are citizens of the borderlands, from whence death is the only escape. Blake expertly captures the complexities of the border area in these raw and honest adventure stories of love and vengeance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MysteriousPress.com Open Road
• Release date: Jan 10, 2012
• ISBN: 9781453239605

James Carlos Blake

James Carlos Blake is the author of nine novels. Among his literary honors are the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Southwest Book Award, Quarterly West Novella Prize, and Chautauqua South Book Award. He lives in Arizona.

Reviews for Borderlands

[lhicks5 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book would be excellent to use with older high school students in an ethnic studies or Chicano(a) studies class. Since the book is a collection of short stories, the book can be divided amongst the class, in order to accomodate for students who either have trouble reading longer books or do not have a strong passion for reading. In addition, the book might spark the interest of students who can relate on a cultural and socio-economic level. I like how some of the stories used the first person, and the detail of the surroundings made it easy to visual the environment in some of the stories.