A Desert between Two Seas: A Novel in Stories
Baja California, beginning in 1820 and extending over multiple decades, is the setting for a novel about a series of events and characters, with the peninsula’s stark landscape, infrequently punctuated with flourishes of natural beauty, as the dominant venue. It begins with the tale of a young boy pearl diver who is cared for by a local priest in the small church which serves the area. When the boy drowns while diving one day, the devastated priest assumes responsibility and moves off into the wilderness to deal with his guilt.
Over multiple years the former priest shows up at different localities around Baja to interact with a cast of diverse and frequently desperate people which include a struggling hardscrabble farmer who cannot say no and accepts the castaways who come into his life. A “falluquero,” who seems to be a kind of wandering bard/trader normally admired by the locals, also comes into contact with some of the same people touched by the wandering priest. There is also a deaf woman who tries to make the most of her situation and becomes a pistolera and many others. The travels and stories persist up to the 1930s where the long saga comes to a logical ending.
The book is comprised of a number of short stories written in a sparse, non-standard manner eschewing conventional punctuation and quotation marks in the dialogue, which sometimes made it difficult for me to fathom who was speaking to whom. I suspect this book, written by an award-winner for her short stories, will appeal to fans of literary fiction.
