About the Author
Dagobert Gilb is a fiction author/ essayist, who was born in Los Angeles and spent many years in El Paso. His most recent book, “Gritos,” an essay collection, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. He is also the author of “Woodcuts of Women,” “The Last Known Residence of Mickey Acuña” and “The Magic of Blood

About this Book
Like the powerful stories in his The Magic of Blood, Gilb's first novel evokes the heat and dust, poverty, lassitude, and passion of the urban Southwest. With an undivulged past and an uncertain future, rugged, itinerant Mickey waits at an El Paso YMCA for a change in fortune. A dime Western is his bible, working out and desultory hanging out his pastimes. Caught between the chronic malaise of shiftlessness and the spark of mischief, competitiveness, and libido he still possesses, Mickey watches the pathos of his neighbors even as he senses his own. At times, the narrative drifts perilously close to a too-accurate reflection of the resignation and pointlessness it limns, but Gilb buoys his tale with sensitivity, acuity, and humor. For larger public libraries and area collections.