James, Elizabeth Gonzalez. The Bullet Swallower. New York: Simopn & Schuster 2024. Print.
Alferez Antonio Sonoro was born with gold in his eyes. The gold was sharp and it stung him so that he blinked uncontrollably and always carried a vial of salted water in his pocket. Of the four Sonoro brothers he was the only one thus signified, and his parents regarded it a blessing, incontestable proof of divine favor.
Description:
Sometimes just the title is so intriguing you at least have to open the book and check out the first sentences. Who can resist titles like some of my favorites: Last Night at the Brain Thieves Ball, The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling, The Speed of Dark, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Go As a River, The Improbability of Love, The Man Who Understood Women, Summer Hours at the Robbers Library, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, The Ten Thousand Doors of January, and Quirkology?
Books with similarly intriguing titles could have stories or information about virtually anything. Honestly, I feel any tempting title like these deserves to have at least the opening pages explored.
In 1895, Antonio Sonoro sets off from his tiny farm in Mexico to try to save his wife and children from starvation after a long drought destroys their farm. He actually is a bandit, a quick-witted survivor, skilled with a gun, a ruthless man from a long lineage of ruthless men who once ruled the area and accumulated vast riches from their gold mines using local people and harsh labor conditions.
But time, bad luck, and an evil curse have reduced the Sonoro line to only Antonio and his family, with little hope of them ever regaining his ancestors' former luck and fortune.
Antonio's current plan? Rob a train across the border in Houston which he had heard was carrying gold. He convinces his younger brother, Hugo, to help him, but their plans run afoul and the Sonoros find themselves on the wrong side of the Texas Rangers.
The book follows Antonio on his nail-biting journey through the desert as he is simultaneously hunted by the Rangers as well as doggedly seeking to meet up with these same lawmen to enact revenge on their leader.
He'd run from one certain death to another, and his chances of finding the Rangers were as good a finding a teardrop in the ocean. He hadn't seen a footprint in days, and he feared the silence and darkness and dead trees would swallow him...
Author James then jumps 70 years into the future to introduces a man named Jaime Sonoro. Jaime, a renown actor and singer, is living a comfortabl life with his family until he is given an ancient, moldy book. It describes the long, dark history of the Sonoro family, a name Jaime shares but knows nothing about its history.
He begins to read of iron-fisted Sonoro rulers, men who flaunted humanity and the law to amass their fortune. But he also reads of the curse that trails this (his?) family in the form of bad luck. During his reading, he meets a mysterious figure, Remedio, who seems to know even more about the family and their fateful lives.
He saw, for the barest second, malice in Remedio's eyes, a bright white flame that was gone as soon as Jaime was aware of having see it, if he had seen it.
Could Jaime Sonoro be somehow related to this ill-fated family and thus carry the curse? And who exactly is this mysterious figure who has moved into their house and seems to have a quiet knowledge of the Sonoros?
And the feeling of being watched followed Jaime in and out of the house, the hair always tickling the back of his neck like something he'd forgotten, something urgent but out of reach. He began imagining men in long trench coats spying on him from behind newspapers....He felt camera eyes on him while he sat alone at his desk reading. Since the book had come into the house -- he'd been in the habit of turning on lights to peek inside closets, checking always who was behind him, peering through the curtains, half expecting to see a madman outside wielding a tommy gun.
It's an unusual book, beautifully written about some dastardly people and their quests for survival, money, revenge, and overcoming their destiny. I dove into it based on the title and soon found myself totally immersed in this complex family and history, as well as the current stories of both the gun slinger and the modern actor/singer, men who might somehow be related.
Highly recommended for sheer adventure, brilliant writing, and captivating story-telling. Gripping in every way.
[P.S. An interesting tidbit about the book is that this story is based on the author's great grandfather, Antonio Gonzalez, who was a bandido in the last-1800s. He experienced much of the same history as the gunslinger, Antonio Sonoro, even being left for dead at one point and referred to as "El Tragabalas," the Bullet Swallower, just like Sonoro. It was a story author James had frequently heard growing up, one that certainly adds a twist of reality to the novel.]
Everything in this book is true except for the stuff I made up." - Elizabeth Gonzalez James (author)
Happy reading.
Fred
If this book interests you, be sure to check out:
North, Anna. Outlawed.
Ana, a young woman banished from her Western town in the 1980s, joins up with the Hole-In-The-Wall Gang, outlaws led by The Kid. But she learns this is no ordinary group of shoot-'em-up thugs. (previously reviewed here)
