Foreword Review INDIES Multicultural Award, Silver 30 Most Anticipated Fiction Books for Fall, Kirkus Reviews 15 Great New Books for Hispanic Heritage Month, NBC News A collection of short stories where Mexican-Americans grapple with their roots as their ambitions take them far from home. How does a Mexican-American, the son of immigrants, a child of the border, la frontera, leave home and move to the heart of gringo America? How does he adapt to the worlds of wealth, elite universities, the rush and power of New York City? How does he make peace with a stern old-fashioned father who has only known hard field labor his whole life? With echoes of Dreiser's American Tragedy and Fitzgerald's Gatsby , Troncoso tells his luminous stories through the lens of an exile adrift in the 21st century, his characters suffering from the loss of culture and language, the loss of roots and home as they adapt to the glittering promises of new worlds which ultimately seem so empty.