The Water Museum
Stories
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
This hard-hitting, beautiful short story collection from one of America's preeminent literary voices “reflect[s] both sides of his Mexican-American heritage while stretching the reader's understanding of human boundaries” (Kirkus).
Examining the borders between one nation and another, between one person and another, Urrea reveals his mastery of the short form. This collection includes the Edgar-award winning "Amapola" and his now-classic "Bid Farewell to Her Many Horses," which had the honor of being chosen for NPR's "Selected Shorts" not once but twice.
Suffused with wanderlust, compassion, and no small amount of rock and roll, The Water Museum is a collection that confirms Luis Alberto Urrea as an American master.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Urrea's (The Hummingbird's Daughter) collection of darkly funny stories explores racial politics and amorphous cultural lines, set primarily in the Southwest. In the title story, a small town is in the throes of a drought so prolonged that a water museum is created to teach the town's children about the long-lost resource. During the museum's reenactment of rain, one student begs, "Stop it, Miss! Oh, stop the rain!" In the Edgar Award winning story "Amapola," a white high school boy falls in love with his best friend's Mexican-American cousin, Amapola. Her very conservative and protective family puts the lover through the ringer to prove his love for Amapola. In "The National City Reparation Society," Junior and Chango take a canoe fishing and are stopped by border patrolmen. Junior is urged to leave the scene, while Chango is held, sinisterly, behind. Urrea has a wonderful eye for details and captures each story's context with wonderfully sharp observations: when Junior walks through his old hometown, he sees "the flat old cat carcass they used for home plate." These stories are vibrant, tender, and invoke a strong sense of place.
