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Overview
She's back: Gloria Damasco, the Chicana detective tempered during the civil rights movement. And she's involved in solving another mystery complete with gruesome murders. Is it a serial killer that is leaving the corpses strewn with artifacts from Native American rituals? Does it have something to do with the farm workers' union which the victims had worked for in the seventies? Gloria Damasco and Justin Escobar are the detectives who begin to look into the disappearance and death of the three former activists from the seventies. The trail the sleuths follow leads from the grape vineyards of Delano in 1973 to the old Native American ghost dancing site in the Valley of the Moon. The portentous landscape becomes a fitting site for the surprise denouement foreshadowed by Gloria's mysterious visions.Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
This second mystery from Corpi features Chicana detective Gloria Damasco, introduced in Eulogy for a Brown Angel, in a mildly suspenseful plot. Upon learning that Sonny Mares, an old friend and fellow activist in the United Farmworkers Strike and grape boycott of 1973, has committed suicide, Damasco is immediately suspicious-especially when she and a fellow investigator (also a former activist) go to Sonny's apartment and discover a videotape of a pesticide tank being blown up-and a bunch of grapes. Gloria, who struggles with the mixed blessing of being able to foresee the future, is also plagued by dreams of a young woman in trouble. As two other friends from the grape-boycott days disappear and a young woman who was raped and suffered pesticide poisoning resurfaces after many years, it becomes clear that a time of reckoning with the past is at hand. Corpi writes convincingly about Gloria's attempts to interpret her visions and does a fine job depicting decent people handling dangerous situations. But many moments of harking-back and a rash of coincidences slow the narrative.Publishers Weekly -
This second mystery from Corpi features Chicana detective Gloria Damasco, introduced in Eulogy for a Brown Angel, in a mildly suspenseful plot. Upon learning that Sonny Mares, an old friend and fellow activist in the United Farmworkers Strike and grape boycott of 1973, has committed suicide, Damasco is immediately suspicious-especially when she and a fellow investigator (also a former activist) go to Sonny's apartment and discover a videotape of a pesticide tank being blown up-and a bunch of grapes. Gloria, who struggles with the mixed blessing of being able to foresee the future, is also plagued by dreams of a young woman in trouble. As two other friends from the grape-boycott days disappear and a young woman who was raped and suffered pesticide poisoning resurfaces after many years, it becomes clear that a time of reckoning with the past is at hand. Corpi writes convincingly about Gloria's attempts to interpret her visions and does a fine job depicting decent people handling dangerous situations. But many moments of harking-back and a rash of coincidences slow the narrative. (Apr.)Library Journal
Apprentice private eye Gloria Damasco and her employer, ex-cop Justin Escobar, take a journey of sorts after a friend-active in the Chicago Civil Rights movement-supposedly commits suicide. Their circuitous search through the Oakland area for their former companions involves the years-ago rape and subsequent pesticide poisoning of a talented Mexican girl as well as recurrent images of snake skins and puncture marks and Gloria's disturbing clairvoyant powers. A competent if not compelling work from the award-winning author of Eulogy for a Brown Angel (Arte Pblico Pr., 1992).Book Details
Published
April 1, 1995
Publisher
Arte Publico Press
Pages
249
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9781558851344