Now I Surrender
Past and present come together to tell a very different story of how the West was won in Álvaro Enrigue’s brutal yet enchanting novel, Now I Surrender.
In this literary alt-western that moves through space and time, Enrigue unspools an impeccably researched history of the Apache Wars and the contested borderlands of Mexico and the U.S. during the 19th century. In 1836, Mexico is a new republic, yet Apaches do not care for the Mexican or the American interlopers: in Janos, they attack a widow’s ranch and take the woman, Camila, hostage. Soon, Lt. Col. José María Zuloaga of the Mexican Army is sent to round up cattle rustlers but instead stumbles upon the trail of this dramatic abduction. He decides to go after Camila and slowly attracts an eclectic and amusing posse to help him find her.
Interjecting this gripping, graphic, yet often hilarious storyline is a modern-day narrator (Enrigue) who discusses at length Apache culture, society, and its vaunted warrior class with a particular emphasis and obsession with the legendary chief Geronimo and the final days leading up to his surrender to U.S. authorities in 1886. The novel shifts halfway through from Zuloaga’s quest to find Camila, to a broader fictionalized account of the American generals and soldiers sent to fight the Apache Wars and bring Geronimo in. Readers must wait to see the resolution of Zuloaga’s rescue mission, as well as Camila’s fate, while the storylines rise and fall at Enrigue’s pleasure.
Now I Surrender is a somewhat uneven mélange of history and historical fiction that engages every sense with its luxuriant prose and impresses with its research.
