The Running of Juan Antonio

By David Xavier

A tour de force! An entertaining literary event that keeps you to the last heartpounding sentence.
"This one sticks with you forever."

Juan Antonio spent the last three years in grand and small gestures of love beneath the balconies on those sunless and claustrophobic streets, three years, ever since the remnants of boyhood had cracked from his voice.

But on the day he was killed Juan Antonio woke with the grandest of all gestures already worked out in his head, a display of the depths of his love that would put to shame all the other would-be suitors who stood on the wet cobbles and shouted to the same girl above them, a display that would win the heart of Isabella Ibáñez forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Xavier
• Release date: Aug 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463535929

Book preview

The Running of Juan Antonio

David Xavier

To all who have always wished to write,

a great novel burning inside them…

Juan Antonio spent the last three years in grand and small gestures of love beneath the balconies on those sunless and claustrophobic streets, three years, ever since the remnants of boyhood had cracked from his voice. But on the day he was killed Juan Antonio woke with the grandest of all gestures already worked out in his head, a display of the depths of his love that would put to shame all the other would-be suitors who stood on the wet cobbles and shouted to the same girl above them, a display that would win the heart of Isabella Ibáñez forever.

For a long time small towns in Spain suffered a drought in prosperities. Workers pulled on their gloves at sunrise and didn’t peel them off until the sun had been long down, working straight through the lunch hour and observing siesta for no longer than it took to get to the middle of a bad dream. They often snoozed in their cars, parked up along the narrow cobbled streets, and one could mark the end of the resting hour by the many echoed closings of car doors and the quiet murmur of tired voices.

They relied on their traditions for inspirations, for life. They filled the churches on Sundays and sang all together, books held up and chins in the air. On Saturdays the grounds at the bullfights shook with stomping fans in the stands. They revered the fighters as heroes. Fathers pointed them out in crowds to their sons, kneeling and whispering of their courage and conquests. They bought them meals and stood unassuming in the background as their children went to ask for autographs. It was these men of the bullrings the people held as models of bravery, images of success, the embodiment of strength and happiness.

Juan Antonio did not lack the courage of a bullfighter. He had been tossed by bulls many times in the corrals, and dusted himself off and took the cape in hand again