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Synopsis
In the "horse latitudes" of the Gulf of Mexico, that zone where long periods of high pressure keep the winds away, becalmed sailors sometimes tossed the horses overboard to conserve water. In these unapologetically traditional and realistic stories, characters find themselves in circumstances which demand similar difficult and undesirable acts. Because the stories are set in the Southwest and Mexico, from about 1920 through 1990, they often hinge on the suspicions, antagonism and ignorance the region's different cultures, races and classes bear against each other. C. W. Smith is an accomplished fictionalist whose vision rings true and whose characters are familiar in the best sense of the word. Although he has published four novels this is his first collection of short stories.
Publishers Weekly
This atmospheric collection of 11 short stories roams the American Southwest and Mexico, providing an amiable mix of coming-of-age yarns and tales of cultural friction. In ``Child Guidance,'' a tourist in Mexico watches a young boy stumble uneasily toward maturity. In ``The Plantation Club,'' a jazz tale finds its way into an unusual place: a down-and-out club on the Texas-Mexican border. In the title story, perhaps the best tale here, a young man who fled to Canada to avoid serving in Vietnam seeks to understand his experiences of playing at war as a child and then of training at a Marine Corps base in San Diego while at the same time struggling to communicate with his father. Some of the stories end too quickly, as if Smith (Thin Men of Haddam) were pressing for a conclusion, but his elegant language, along with his knack for choice detail, ably carries most of the tales here. (Oct.)