Latin American Peoples & Cultures - Fiction & Literature, Thrillers, Crimes - Fiction

Do They Know I'm Running?

Name: Do They Know I'm Running?
Author: David Corbett
ISBN: 9781453289709

by David Corbett

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Overview

From acclaimed author David Corbett, a stunning and suspenseful novel of a life without loyalties and the borders inside ourselves.

Roque Montalvo is wise beyond his eighteen years. Orphaned at birth, a gifted musician, he’s stuck in a California backwater, helping his Salvadoran aunt care for his damaged brother, an ex-marine badly wounded in Iraq. When immigration agents arrest his uncle, the family has nowhere else to turn. Roque, badgered by his street-hardened cousin, agrees to bring the old man back, relying on the criminal gangs that control the dangerous smuggling routes from El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, to the U.S. border.

But his cousin has told Roque only so much. In reality, he will have to transport not just his uncle but two others: an Arab whose intentions are disturbingly vague and a young beauty promised to a Mexican crime lord. Roque discovers that his journey involves crossing more than one kind of border, and he will be asked time and again to choose between survival and betrayal—of his country, his family, his heart.

Synopsis

Caught up in a scheme to smuggle his deported uncle back across the border, a young American must fight to save his family, himself, and the woman he loves At eighteen, Roque Montalvo is a gifted guitarist and a hit with women, but the rest of his life is a struggle. Orphaned at birth and scraping by in a rough Northern California town, he helps support his hardworking aunt and tends to his ex-marine brother—a physical and emotional wreck after his tour in Iraq. Then, to make matters worse, his uncle gets snared in a workplace raid and federal immigration agents deport him back to El Salvador. When Montalvo’s loose-cannon cousin, himself a former deportee, shows up unannounced, he draws Montalvo into a scheme to rescue his uncle and bring him back home. It’s a perilous undertaking in the best of cases, now that gangs and organized crime control the smuggling routes, and the risk ratchets higher when Montalvo learns he’ll be transporting not just his uncle, but also a Palestinian refugee and a young beauty destined for the clutches of a fierce Mexican crime boss. A gritty, realistic, and unforgettable adventure where all borders are tested, Do They Know I’m Running? tightropes the perilous line between menace and hope, danger and home.

About the Author, David Corbett

David Corbett is the author of three critically acclaimed novels:The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Book), and Blood of Paradise—nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar, and named one of the Top Ten Mysteries and Thrillers of 2007 by the Washington Post and a San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book. His short fiction and essays have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies, and his story "Pretty Little Parasite," from Las Vegas Noir, was selected for inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories 2009.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

Corbett (Blood of Paradise) delivers a rich, hard-hitting epic that illuminates the violent and surreal landscapes of Central America and Mexico. After 18-year-old Roque Montalvo’s uncle, Faustino, an illegal Salvadoran immigrant, is deported in an INS sweep, Roque’s criminal cousin, Pablo “Happy” Orantes, cooks up a scheme to smuggle Faustino back to California, along with a mysterious Palestinian asylum seeker, but it involves a hefty price to Latin American thugs. Happy strikes a deal with an FBI agent, offering up a major drug dealer for his family’s citizenship papers. Roque travels from California to El Salvador, where he discovers that the gangsters want him to deliver a beautiful girl about his age, Lupe, to a vicious border crime leader. Roque and Lupe embark on an unforgettable journey north, pursued by banditos, police, and the FBI. Of course, Roque falls for Lupe and vows to help her escape a dismal fate. Fans of Luis Alberto Urrea and Don Winslow alike will be richly rewarded. (Mar.)

Booklist

Eighteen-year-old Roque Montalvo must travel from California's East Bay to El Salvador to help Tio Faustino illegally reenter the U.S. Faustino has been arrested in an illegal-immigration sweep in Oakland and immediately deported. Faustino's son has made the arrangements for passage with MS-13, the Salvadoran multinational gang. But Roque soon learns that he must also shepherd a mysterious Arab as well as rescue Lupe, a beautiful, terrified, embittered, young Salvadoran woman, who is to be given to a psychotic MS-13 lieutenant en route. The journey is perilous, but so, author Corbett makes clear, is life for illegal aliens in California. Corbett is covering familiar ground (Blood of Paradise, 2007) but in this powerful, evocative, character-driven novel, he has written what should be a breakout success. What drives Corbett's characters to risk death, violent gangs, ICE, armed "Minutemen," deportation, and life as a fugitive in the U.S? As the Arab says to Lupe: "Yes, there is little hope in the world. But without America, there is none. Despite everything, you will have a chance." Readers who devour and then forget formulaic crime novels won't soon forget this one.