Author Description

A working-class vato looks for love, lust, and meaning in the Southwest in this "highly evocative" New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year ( Publishers Weekly). Mickey Acuña is a man suspended between a shrouded past and an uncertain future. Emerging from the landscape of the Southwest, buffeted by life and licking his wounds, he moves into a YMCA to wait for a check that is coming to save him—a check that demands an address. As days and then weeks pass without its arrival, Mickey picks up work; odd jobs at first, then shifts at the Y's cash register. He hangs out with his neighbors, plays handball, drinks coffee, shoots pool, gets drunk, and falls in love with the women he meets, works with, and passes on the street. In the vacuum of the Y, Mickey unwittingly finds himself becoming the center of a community starved for meaning: Sarge, with his fast-food coupons; Omar, with his drunken rages and obsession with the vanished Lucy; Rosemary, whose abundant physical presence both attracts and repels him. Mickey fights to maintain his distance and his freedom, until the narrative converges abruptly around him in a profound and shocking conclusion. "Gilb buoys his tale with sensitivity, acuity, and humor." — Library Journal "His characterizations of the underemployed, mentally ill and abandoned men and women who congregate there are vibrant." — Publishers Weekly</