Kirjahaku

“Hector moved away from what remained of the blazing house toward the orchard and waited on one knee until the soldiers spotted him. Then he stood, defiantly waved the blood-stained machete at them, and quickly raced through the rows of fruit trees that curved up the hill and away from the woods that concealed Leticia and the boys.”—from The Journey of Hector RabinalSo begins the journey of Hector Rabinal, a journey that takes him far from the threat of the brownshirted soldiers of his Guatemalan home to Texas, where he experiences the best and the worst of life among the Gringos. But when he learns that Leticia, his wife, is missing, he is drawn back to Guatemala. As he searches for Leticia, Hector brings hope and belief to his village, now largely destroyed by the brownshirts—his house is rebuilt, crops are planted, people laugh and talk once more. But then the brownshirts come again.Donley Watt’s first novel is a spare and strong story of what it means to remain proud and honorable in the midst if oppression and hopelessness. Tragic in events, The Journey of Hector Rabinal affirms the strength of the human spirit.Spanish edition published in cooperation with the Universidad de las Americas, Puebla, Mexico. Translation by Pedro Angel Palou.

First published in May 1994, The Journey of Héctor Rabinal is a spare and strong story of what it means to remain proud and honorable in the midst of oppression and hopelessness. Hector Rabinal’s journey takes him far from the threat of the brownshirted soldiers of his Guatemalan home to Texas, where he experiences the best and the worst of life among the Gringos. But when he learns that Leticia, his wife, is missing, he is drawn back to Guatemala. As he searches for Leticia, Hector brings hope and belief to his village, now largely destroyed by the brownshirts—his house is rebuilt, crops are planted, people laugh and talk once more. But then the brownshirts come again.Tragic in events, The Journey of Héctor Rabinal affirms the strength of the human spirit.Copublished with the Universidad de las Americas-Puebla.

Reynolds is a forty-something liquor-store owner on Clear Creek Lake, near Cottonwood, in East Texas. Once he was a banker, but the real estate scandals of the '80s taught him he had trusted the wrong people and brought him within a hair of an indictment. Once he had a wife and twin sons, but she left after the scandal, taking the boys to her daddy's ranch in West Texas. Now Reynolds owns Lake Country Liquor Store and lives in a trailer behind the store, with several women passing through his life for intermittent periods. He's satisfied - but a little dissatisfied. Reynolds also has a weird family from whom he's mostly estranged. His mother, Edwina, is a bible beater, fond of giving sermonettes to Reynolds, her oldest son who has strayed from the church and lived in sin with women. His brother, Perry, is a survivalist with a stash of AK47s and other automatic weapons that he sells illegally from time to time. Perry also teaches government at the local high school, but his job is in peril because he's been teaching his own anti-government views. And Perry has a dark secret hidden in his past. Ray Reynolds, Sr., is a retired Ford truck dealer who's bent on inventing a perpetual motion machine and leaves his wife to live as a hermit at the lake and focus on his invention. The palpable tension between the brothers makes this in part a Cain-and-Abel story. Perry has always been the good son, but Reynolds learns more than he almost wants to know about his brother. And though they fight - at least once physically - they remain brothers, with the distance between them balanced by their sense of family loyalty. There is laughter in these pages in wry, witty dialogue and raw self-honesty, and there is suspense in Perry's late-night gun deals, which he conducts on the boat ramp by Reynold's store, without Reynold's knowledge. But there's also a real sense of people with frailties and weaknesses and dreams and hopes, for themselves and for their family. Donley Watt captures small-town East Texas, its attitudes and habits and language, with a masterful sense of place. His rednecks are as real as his Dallas lady and his Austin vegetarian. Reynolds and his family draw you into their story until you can't leave and you'll find yourself turning pages rapidly at the end, desperate to know what happens to them. And whether Reynolds will ever truly be happy with his life.

A novel of ambitions and desires thwarted in a small Texas town, Dancing with Lyndon brings the early 1950s to life. Living in a small conservative and racist town, Thomas Patterson, a stiff young criminal lawyer, is running for state district judge and hoping for endorsements from either the governor or young Lyndon Johnson, who's running for the senate. Thomas's stay-at-home wife and their teenaged son Tommy are satellites to his grandiose political aspirations. But all hopes for a substantial political career are dashed when a black client Thomas successfully defended against a charge of the rape of a white girl kills himself, leaving a note confessing to the crime. The town turns against the Patterson family, jeering, threatening, and even vandalizing Thomas's car. The menacing atmosphere only adds to the tensions escalating within the family. Mary Lee, Thomas's dreamy, restless wife, can't quite grasp why she is so unhappy but knows it has something to do with Thomas's reliance on logic and reason to the exclusion of all emotion. Impulsively, she seeks the advice of a gypsy woman who foretells temptation, change, and someone to show her the way. Fourteen-year-old Tommy is caught between his parents' conflicting unspoken demands and struggles to make his own way and his own decisions about life. As tensions mount, he alternates between concern for his parents and the forbidden, budding attraction he feels for the daughter of a gypsy woman. All the protagonists' desires and ambitions come to a head at a barbecue where Lyndon Johnson is scheduled to speak. Thomas's political career takes an unexpected turn; Mary Lee finally understands where her desires can lead her, and Tommy comes to see his parents in a new light.

Maggie O'Neill's life in Houston has become a story of loss. Maggie, always in a contentious relationship with her mother, becomes caretaker when the difficult woman is dying of cancer. Maggie's marriage of almost twenty-five years ends in divorce, and her only child has left Houston to find his independence. Maggie is left with little more than her camera, to which she, a novice, warily entrusts her future.Desperate to begin a new life, she drives to Laredo and fights off her doubts as she crosses the border into Mexico. Slowly, the Mexican landscape and people open her eyes to a fresh way of seeing through the lens of her camera. During a stopover in San Miguel de Allende she receives unsolicited advice to go to Casa Azul, Frida Kahlo's house in Coyoacan. In Oaxaca, on impulse, Maggie enrolls in a watercolor class taught by Connor, a visiting Texas artist, and from there the story unfolds through both Maggie's and Connor's eyes.The author's own experiences of living in Oaxaca and his close observation of detail inform the story in a rich, evocative way.