There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven
Stories
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award • Finalist for The Story Prize • Finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction • Finalist for the California Book Award • Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the New American Voices Award
"Ruben Reyes Jr. is a wonder." — Héctor Tobar
An electrifying debut story collection about Central American identity that spans past, present, and future worlds to reveal what happens when your life is no longer your own.
An ordinary man wakes one morning to discover he’s a famous reggaetón star. An aging abuela slowly morphs into a marionette puppet. A struggling academic discovers the horrifying cost of becoming a Self-Made Man.
In There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven, Ruben Reyes Jr. conjures strange dreamlike worlds to explore what we would do if we woke up one morning and our lives were unrecognizable. Boundaries between the past, present, and future are blurred. Menacing technology and unchecked bureaucracy cut through everyday life with uncanny dread. The characters, from mango farmers to popstars to ex-guerilla fighters to cyborgs, are forced to make uncomfortable choices—choices that not only mean life or death, but might also allow them to be heard in a world set on silencing the voices of Central Americans.
Blazing with heart, humor, and inimitable style, There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven subverts everything we think we know about migration and its consequences, capturing what it means to take up a new life—whether willfully or forced—with piercing and brilliant clarity. A gifted new storyteller and trailblazing stylist, Reyes not only transports to other worlds but alerts us to the heartache and injustice of our own.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A master storyteller shines a light on the experiences of immigrants in this stunning short-story collection. As the child of immigrants himself, author Ruben Reyes Jr. understands the feeling of living in two different worlds and never feeling fully comfortable in either. Yet with these stories of love, familial obligation, and mangoes, he puts our shared humanity on display wherever we live. From the sci-fi tinged “Try Again” to the heartbreaking comedic farce “My Abuela, the Puppet,” these stories immediately hooked us, then went in directions we never expected. While infusing the collection with aspects of Reyes’ Salvadoran roots, each of these tales also addresses universal topics like grief, dealing with an aging loved one, and romantic breakups. In a world where some people want us to focus on our differences, it’s refreshing to experience stories that remind us of how much we truly share.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Reyes debuts with a scintillating collection of stories in which Salvadoran characters reckon with new technologies and the evils of capitalism. The wry opener, "He Eats His Own," follows a finance broker in Los Angeles who pays his relatives in San Salvador to grow and ship mangoes for him to eat, even as their work puts them in the crosshairs of gang violence. In the pitch perfect "Try Again," a bisexual Salvadoran American man pays a biotech company to transplant his late father's brain tissue into a robot. After being rejected by his father because of his sexuality, he finally finds the acceptance he craved via the AI-powered robot. In "Self-Made Man," one of the more devastating entries, a researcher uncovers a secret U.S. government program to create manual laborers from the reanimated corpses of undocumented Central Americans. The volume is shot through with genuine pathos and astute social commentary, and Reyes shifts effortlessly from absurdism to satire to sci-fi. These dynamic tales herald the arrival of a promising new talent.
