Reviews for The Ghost of Milagro Creek
“A ‘ghost’ story woven with teen love and tragedy ... Distinguished by its setting in the historically rich and evocative landscape of Taos, N.M. [Sumner] draws upon the area's natural beauty, and its Hispanic, Pueblo, Apache and Anglo roots, as the backdrop to an intricately woven tale of a community at risk.”
--Jane Ciabattari, president of the National Book Critics Circle
PURCHASE | EXCERPT | DISCUSSION | BACK STORY
“A ‘ghost’ story woven with teen love and tragedy ... Distinguished by its setting in the historically rich and evocative landscape of Taos, N.M. [Sumner] draws upon the area's natural beauty, and its Hispanic, Pueblo, Apache and Anglo roots, as the backdrop to an intricately woven tale of a community at risk.”
--Jane Ciabattari, president of the National Book Critics Circle
PURCHASE | EXCERPT | DISCUSSION | BACK STORY
BookIdeas.com
The Ghost of Milagro Creek is a haunted book. Its predominant narrator is an intriguing, deceased medicine woman named Abuela Ignacia; several deaths take place in the story; and the note from the author at the end explains that she wrote the book with her late husband on her mind.
The book's epigraph reads, "The dead are silent, but the rocks can speak." These rocks are the primitive petroglyphs that were carved by ancient inhabitants around Taos, New Mexico, where the novel is set. Sumner selects one of these drawings to begin each chapter and invoke a sense of history--and mystery. Read more...
The Ghost of Milagro Creek is a haunted book. Its predominant narrator is an intriguing, deceased medicine woman named Abuela Ignacia; several deaths take place in the story; and the note from the author at the end explains that she wrote the book with her late husband on her mind.
The book's epigraph reads, "The dead are silent, but the rocks can speak." These rocks are the primitive petroglyphs that were carved by ancient inhabitants around Taos, New Mexico, where the novel is set. Sumner selects one of these drawings to begin each chapter and invoke a sense of history--and mystery. Read more...
Los Angeles Times, October 15, 2010
To be Apache in the modern American West; to raise two sons between the mini-malls and barrios outside Taos, N.M.: What is it like? Read More...
To be Apache in the modern American West; to raise two sons between the mini-malls and barrios outside Taos, N.M.: What is it like? Read More...
Rundpinne, October 8, 2010
The story of Ignacia Vigil Romero, a full Jacarilla Apache, and the two boys, Mister and Tomás, she raised to adulthood unfolds in a barrio of Taos, New Mexico—a mixed community of Native Americans, Hispanics, and whites. Now deceased, Ignacia, a curandera—a medicine woman, though some say a witch—begins this tale of star-crossed lovers. Read more...
The story of Ignacia Vigil Romero, a full Jacarilla Apache, and the two boys, Mister and Tomás, she raised to adulthood unfolds in a barrio of Taos, New Mexico—a mixed community of Native Americans, Hispanics, and whites. Now deceased, Ignacia, a curandera—a medicine woman, though some say a witch—begins this tale of star-crossed lovers. Read more...
New West, October 4, 2010
In the moving and evocative new novel The Ghost of Milagro Creek, Melanie Sumner transports readers into a part of Taos, New Mexico that is well off the tourist path. The Taos Sumner depicts is rife with violence, teen pregnancy, high school drop-outs, alcoholism, and the aftermath of plain bad decisions, but she renders it without judgment, and with considerable affection in this melancholy story of a love triangle that culminates in a death. Read more...
In the moving and evocative new novel The Ghost of Milagro Creek, Melanie Sumner transports readers into a part of Taos, New Mexico that is well off the tourist path. The Taos Sumner depicts is rife with violence, teen pregnancy, high school drop-outs, alcoholism, and the aftermath of plain bad decisions, but she renders it without judgment, and with considerable affection in this melancholy story of a love triangle that culminates in a death. Read more...
Bostonia, Fall 2010
Death in all its varieties—natural, accidental, self-inflicted, and ultimately, homicidal—drives the interconnected narratives in Sumner’s novel. Set in the barrio of Taos, read more...
Death in all its varieties—natural, accidental, self-inflicted, and ultimately, homicidal—drives the interconnected narratives in Sumner’s novel. Set in the barrio of Taos, read more...
New Mexico Magazine
Reminiscent of Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me Ultima, Melanie Sumner’s book soars with its own brand of magical realism.
Reminiscent of Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me Ultima, Melanie Sumner’s book soars with its own brand of magical realism.
Patricia West-Barker
October, 2010
October, 2010
The Los Angeles Times
The reader falls through layers of time into countless stories of danger, love--a love strong enough to inspire murder--the pressures of community and blood boiling...You remember Willa Cather's O Pioneers! and Edith Wharton's Ethan Fromme--books set in wildly different landscapes in which true love becomes a death cage. "Tu eres mi vida," one of the sons tells the girl. Oh, how you wish he hadn't.
The reader falls through layers of time into countless stories of danger, love--a love strong enough to inspire murder--the pressures of community and blood boiling...You remember Willa Cather's O Pioneers! and Edith Wharton's Ethan Fromme--books set in wildly different landscapes in which true love becomes a death cage. "Tu eres mi vida," one of the sons tells the girl. Oh, how you wish he hadn't.
Susan Salter Reynolds
August 15, 2010
August 15, 2010
The Richmond Times-Dispatch
A healing process surges through the novel with subtlety and force. Sumner has created a world that's too rich and filled with engaging characters for just one novel; let's hope for a sequel.
A healing process surges through the novel with subtlety and force. Sumner has created a world that's too rich and filled with engaging characters for just one novel; let's hope for a sequel.
Clarke Crutchfield
August 8, 2010
August 8, 2010
Time Out Chicago
Though the moment on which Milagro Creek turns happens fairly early on, we’d rather not spoil it, mostly because Sumner so immediately brings her characters to life that when it happens, it’s devastating. And you can hit snooze on your Lovely Bones alarm; Ignacia’s out-of-body narration works seamlessly into a story that not only simmers with metaphysical tension, but requires a matronly knowledge of everyone’s business. And as the pressure rises, it’s clear that even if she were alive, there’s little her healing powers could do to help.
Though the moment on which Milagro Creek turns happens fairly early on, we’d rather not spoil it, mostly because Sumner so immediately brings her characters to life that when it happens, it’s devastating. And you can hit snooze on your Lovely Bones alarm; Ignacia’s out-of-body narration works seamlessly into a story that not only simmers with metaphysical tension, but requires a matronly knowledge of everyone’s business. And as the pressure rises, it’s clear that even if she were alive, there’s little her healing powers could do to help.
Jonathan Messinger
July 22, 2010
July 22, 2010
National Public Radio, "Books We Like"
Melanie Sumner, who was raised in Rome, Ga., has written saucily about her Southern roots (in her first novel, The School of Beauty and Charm) and knowingly about West Africa, where she served in the Peace Corps (in her story collection Polite Society). Her second novel is distinguished by its setting in the historically rich and evocative landscape of Taos, N.M. She draws upon the area's natural beauty, and its Hispanic, Pueblo, Apache and Anglo roots, as the backdrop to an intricately woven tale of a community at risk.
The Ghost of Milagro Creek is the story of a teenage love triangle. Mister Romero and Tomas Mondragon, blood brothers since boyhood, are mesmerized by Raquel "Rocky" O'Brien, a Santa Fe gringa, from the moment she enters their all-male high school classroom in 1995.
"Yowza," whispers Mister.
"S'up hoochie-pants!" calls Tomas.
The primary narrator, a ghostly presence hovering over the novel, is Mister's abuela, Ignacia Vigil Romero, a curandera (medicine woman) who helped raise both boys in the Taos barrio. Ignacia begins her story as she lies in her casket on the Wednesday before Easter 2001. "Only in Taos, New Mexico ... would you hold a wake for a witch," Ignacia notes wryly.
Ignacia is trained in the age-old ways. She gathers medicinal herbs, grows her garden, and teaches Mister the life lessons of his Taos ancestors. At 15, Ignacia runs away from the Indian boarding school in Santa Fe and survives a year in the wilderness with her younger brother Ernesto. Years later, she snatches Mister from his mother's abusive boyfriend. She also provides a home for Tomas and his younger sister when their single mother is in jail.
Sumner begins each chapter with a petroglyph, an ancient carving in stone that Ignacia teaches Mister is part of the ancient "book of life." The plot unfolds via police reports, witness transcripts, faxes and other testimonials. This weaving together of the traditional and the contemporary suits Sumner's multigenerational tale. The drama of love turned to violence is almost secondary in this novel. Sumner's most winning creation is Ignacia, the fiercely loving abuela, and the chorus of strong-willed and eccentric Taosenos, a community whose voices are rarely heard in literature.
Melanie Sumner, who was raised in Rome, Ga., has written saucily about her Southern roots (in her first novel, The School of Beauty and Charm) and knowingly about West Africa, where she served in the Peace Corps (in her story collection Polite Society). Her second novel is distinguished by its setting in the historically rich and evocative landscape of Taos, N.M. She draws upon the area's natural beauty, and its Hispanic, Pueblo, Apache and Anglo roots, as the backdrop to an intricately woven tale of a community at risk.
The Ghost of Milagro Creek is the story of a teenage love triangle. Mister Romero and Tomas Mondragon, blood brothers since boyhood, are mesmerized by Raquel "Rocky" O'Brien, a Santa Fe gringa, from the moment she enters their all-male high school classroom in 1995.
"Yowza," whispers Mister.
"S'up hoochie-pants!" calls Tomas.
The primary narrator, a ghostly presence hovering over the novel, is Mister's abuela, Ignacia Vigil Romero, a curandera (medicine woman) who helped raise both boys in the Taos barrio. Ignacia begins her story as she lies in her casket on the Wednesday before Easter 2001. "Only in Taos, New Mexico ... would you hold a wake for a witch," Ignacia notes wryly.
Ignacia is trained in the age-old ways. She gathers medicinal herbs, grows her garden, and teaches Mister the life lessons of his Taos ancestors. At 15, Ignacia runs away from the Indian boarding school in Santa Fe and survives a year in the wilderness with her younger brother Ernesto. Years later, she snatches Mister from his mother's abusive boyfriend. She also provides a home for Tomas and his younger sister when their single mother is in jail.
Sumner begins each chapter with a petroglyph, an ancient carving in stone that Ignacia teaches Mister is part of the ancient "book of life." The plot unfolds via police reports, witness transcripts, faxes and other testimonials. This weaving together of the traditional and the contemporary suits Sumner's multigenerational tale. The drama of love turned to violence is almost secondary in this novel. Sumner's most winning creation is Ignacia, the fiercely loving abuela, and the chorus of strong-willed and eccentric Taosenos, a community whose voices are rarely heard in literature.
Jane Ciabattari
July 22, 2010
July 22, 2010
Atlanta Magazine
A cavernous sense of loss permeates The Ghost of Milagro Creek, a tragic story of love and heartbreak and consequences set in the barrio of Taos, New Mexico. The title may refer to the incandescent spirit of Ignacia Vigil Romero -- a Native American medicine woman (or witch?) who wields power and influence even from the grave -- but another ghost haunts the pages of this luminous novel. Author Melanie Sumner, a native of Rome, Georgia, was living with her husband, David Marr, in the spectacular painted desert of Taos when he was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Within two years, he was gone. "Somehow the landscape I was writing about became imbued with his reckless and noble spirit," Sumner says from her home in Rome, where she loves now with her two children. Sumner's prose is a soulful tribute not only to her late husband, but also to the colorful cultures that define the contemporary American West. Her multigenerational story is captivating from the first page, and her gift for observation flourishes in the desert heat. "She wore high heels that could shave off a man's ear, and she looked like she wanted to," Sumner writes of Rocky, a mysterious girl capable of inspiring suicide (or murder) among blood brothers Mister and Tomas. "Silence surrounded like a coming storm." Through police reports, eyewitness accounts, and caseworker interviews, Sumner constructs a tragedy as she crafts an indelible portrait of a community in quiet crisis.
A cavernous sense of loss permeates The Ghost of Milagro Creek, a tragic story of love and heartbreak and consequences set in the barrio of Taos, New Mexico. The title may refer to the incandescent spirit of Ignacia Vigil Romero -- a Native American medicine woman (or witch?) who wields power and influence even from the grave -- but another ghost haunts the pages of this luminous novel. Author Melanie Sumner, a native of Rome, Georgia, was living with her husband, David Marr, in the spectacular painted desert of Taos when he was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Within two years, he was gone. "Somehow the landscape I was writing about became imbued with his reckless and noble spirit," Sumner says from her home in Rome, where she loves now with her two children. Sumner's prose is a soulful tribute not only to her late husband, but also to the colorful cultures that define the contemporary American West. Her multigenerational story is captivating from the first page, and her gift for observation flourishes in the desert heat. "She wore high heels that could shave off a man's ear, and she looked like she wanted to," Sumner writes of Rocky, a mysterious girl capable of inspiring suicide (or murder) among blood brothers Mister and Tomas. "Silence surrounded like a coming storm." Through police reports, eyewitness accounts, and caseworker interviews, Sumner constructs a tragedy as she crafts an indelible portrait of a community in quiet crisis.
Teresa Weaver
July 2010
July 2010
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ignacia Romero, the curandera for a tightly-knit barrio community in Taos, N.M., has taken her last breath. Yet she is far from finished in telling her story and her spirit hovers over her own coffin, eying the rosary the priest has draped over her hands. She remembers that rosary and has a thing or two to say about it:
“[It was] the one given to me when I was 13 by the missionaries at the Indian boarding school in Santa Fe. There I learned to speak English and pray like a white-eyes. Every night, when my empty belly began to growl, I knelt on the cold floor and asked Jesus and Mary to burn the school to the ground.”
Half Jicarilla Apache, half Tiwa, Ignacia is the flinty, sharp-eyed narrator in Melanie Sumner’s finely crafted “Ghost of Milagro Creek,” a novel about what happens when you surrender your customs, language and beliefs to adapt to a society that might never accept you no matter what you do.
As the book opens, Ignacia’s grandson, Mister, and his best friend, Tomas, are poised to carry out the suicidal pact they made as boys. For Mister, 19, his grief over the loss of his abuela gives him the excuse he’s wanted. With two guns he stole from his great uncle -- and both boys believing in the eternal hellfire the church promises suicides, leaving them planning to shoot each other at the same instant -- Mister alerts Tomas that he’s ready.
When the plan goes awry, Mister heads into the desertand looks for a way to finish himself off, only to come back in contact with the same spirits that saved him years ago.
The first time Mister nearly lost what Ignacia called his susto, or soul, was after a brutal beating at the hands of one of his mother’s boyfriends. He was only four and the cure was almost worse than the cause. “It took me two hours to dig a hole big enough for Mister to stand in with his arms crossed over his chest,” Ignacia recalled. “His head wobbled with half-sleep as I lifted him out of the stroller and lowered him down, but when the cool dirt touched his feet, he jerked awake.”
At first he screams, but the creation myths Ignacia tells the child lull him back to sleep, and her spirit moves into his body to help him heal. When he wakes, asking for his mother, she points to the mesa. “’Your mother is here," the spirit said. "We are your mother now."
After Mister recovers, the Great Spirit gives him a twin, Tomas, to help him find his way through life. The two became inseparable. They even love the same girl, the redheaded, exotic Raquel O’Brien from South Carolina. But Tomas, with no abuela to remove him from his abusive mother’s custody, is irreparably damaged.
When she was a child, terrible things happened to Ignacia, too. At the missionary school, the nuns smacked her in the mouth with a ruler for speaking her own language, and a priest made a habit of sexually abusing her while they read Shakespeare together. “You cannot heal unless you have been wounded,” Ignacia said. Without “the gift of pain,” she would not have had the power to save Mister’s soul. But once she’s gone, will she take it with her?
Sumner uses alternating voices in Ignacia, Raquel, various police reports and witness testimony to create this layered look at two sets of beliefs, Christian and Indian, that have become irreversibly entangled, like the twins, Mister and Romero. “Ghost” shimmers with the light and landscape of New Mexico, and sparkles with the uniquely bleak, dark humor that has allowed generations of Native Americans to survive the worst kind of well-intentioned ethnocide by the U.S. government. The multifaceted narrative moves forward and backward in time until a picture emerges -- one strand at a time, much like the basket-weaving Ignacia's tribe is known -- of a small community whose broken world might finally have a chance at healing, if they can reclaim their once powerful medicine, hidden in plain sight.
Ignacia Romero, the curandera for a tightly-knit barrio community in Taos, N.M., has taken her last breath. Yet she is far from finished in telling her story and her spirit hovers over her own coffin, eying the rosary the priest has draped over her hands. She remembers that rosary and has a thing or two to say about it:
“[It was] the one given to me when I was 13 by the missionaries at the Indian boarding school in Santa Fe. There I learned to speak English and pray like a white-eyes. Every night, when my empty belly began to growl, I knelt on the cold floor and asked Jesus and Mary to burn the school to the ground.”
Half Jicarilla Apache, half Tiwa, Ignacia is the flinty, sharp-eyed narrator in Melanie Sumner’s finely crafted “Ghost of Milagro Creek,” a novel about what happens when you surrender your customs, language and beliefs to adapt to a society that might never accept you no matter what you do.
As the book opens, Ignacia’s grandson, Mister, and his best friend, Tomas, are poised to carry out the suicidal pact they made as boys. For Mister, 19, his grief over the loss of his abuela gives him the excuse he’s wanted. With two guns he stole from his great uncle -- and both boys believing in the eternal hellfire the church promises suicides, leaving them planning to shoot each other at the same instant -- Mister alerts Tomas that he’s ready.
When the plan goes awry, Mister heads into the desertand looks for a way to finish himself off, only to come back in contact with the same spirits that saved him years ago.
The first time Mister nearly lost what Ignacia called his susto, or soul, was after a brutal beating at the hands of one of his mother’s boyfriends. He was only four and the cure was almost worse than the cause. “It took me two hours to dig a hole big enough for Mister to stand in with his arms crossed over his chest,” Ignacia recalled. “His head wobbled with half-sleep as I lifted him out of the stroller and lowered him down, but when the cool dirt touched his feet, he jerked awake.”
At first he screams, but the creation myths Ignacia tells the child lull him back to sleep, and her spirit moves into his body to help him heal. When he wakes, asking for his mother, she points to the mesa. “’Your mother is here," the spirit said. "We are your mother now."
After Mister recovers, the Great Spirit gives him a twin, Tomas, to help him find his way through life. The two became inseparable. They even love the same girl, the redheaded, exotic Raquel O’Brien from South Carolina. But Tomas, with no abuela to remove him from his abusive mother’s custody, is irreparably damaged.
When she was a child, terrible things happened to Ignacia, too. At the missionary school, the nuns smacked her in the mouth with a ruler for speaking her own language, and a priest made a habit of sexually abusing her while they read Shakespeare together. “You cannot heal unless you have been wounded,” Ignacia said. Without “the gift of pain,” she would not have had the power to save Mister’s soul. But once she’s gone, will she take it with her?
Sumner uses alternating voices in Ignacia, Raquel, various police reports and witness testimony to create this layered look at two sets of beliefs, Christian and Indian, that have become irreversibly entangled, like the twins, Mister and Romero. “Ghost” shimmers with the light and landscape of New Mexico, and sparkles with the uniquely bleak, dark humor that has allowed generations of Native Americans to survive the worst kind of well-intentioned ethnocide by the U.S. government. The multifaceted narrative moves forward and backward in time until a picture emerges -- one strand at a time, much like the basket-weaving Ignacia's tribe is known -- of a small community whose broken world might finally have a chance at healing, if they can reclaim their once powerful medicine, hidden in plain sight.
Gina Webb
June 24, 2010
June 24, 2010
Oxford American
"The narrative shifts perspectives to illuminate the thoughts of ... a cast of soulful and broken characters. Sumner's prose hums with ancestral myths to craft a tale less about Mister and more about the wrecked history of his entire community."
"The narrative shifts perspectives to illuminate the thoughts of ... a cast of soulful and broken characters. Sumner's prose hums with ancestral myths to craft a tale less about Mister and more about the wrecked history of his entire community."
Editor's Pick
July 6, 2010
July 6, 2010
The Rumpus
"[Ghost of Milagro Creek] is a little miracle for the way it bridges and leads and leaps, the way it frustrates and calms and punishes the reader who willingly goes willingly over these stepping stones...I found this novel worth my time, and so feel it will be worth yours, especially if you have an interest in New Mexico, in American Indian cosmology, in narrative structure and approaches, in good storytelling."
"[Ghost of Milagro Creek] is a little miracle for the way it bridges and leads and leaps, the way it frustrates and calms and punishes the reader who willingly goes willingly over these stepping stones...I found this novel worth my time, and so feel it will be worth yours, especially if you have an interest in New Mexico, in American Indian cosmology, in narrative structure and approaches, in good storytelling."
Kurt Caswell
July 8, 2010
July 8, 2010
Publishers Weekly
In her second novel, Sumner (The School of Beauty and Charm) crafts a convincing, despairing portrait of Taos, N.Mex. Ignacia Vigil Romero, a tough Jicarilla Apache medicine woman raising her grandson, Mister, uses charms and spells to aid in her motherly duties and to help her neighbors. After Ignacia succumbs to a long illness, there's no one to stop Mister and his best friend Tomas, who recently had a falling out with his lover, Rocky, from fulfilling their long-held suicide pact. Tomás's gun fails to fire, however, leaving Mister alive--and a murderer. Fleeing the police, Mister seeks Rocky to try and get answers. Sumner's cast and a strong sense of Native American and Latino spirituality create a fascinating portrait of a community, wrapping issues of alcoholism, friendship, parental neglect, and conflicted identity around a multidimensional tragedy.
In her second novel, Sumner (The School of Beauty and Charm) crafts a convincing, despairing portrait of Taos, N.Mex. Ignacia Vigil Romero, a tough Jicarilla Apache medicine woman raising her grandson, Mister, uses charms and spells to aid in her motherly duties and to help her neighbors. After Ignacia succumbs to a long illness, there's no one to stop Mister and his best friend Tomas, who recently had a falling out with his lover, Rocky, from fulfilling their long-held suicide pact. Tomás's gun fails to fire, however, leaving Mister alive--and a murderer. Fleeing the police, Mister seeks Rocky to try and get answers. Sumner's cast and a strong sense of Native American and Latino spirituality create a fascinating portrait of a community, wrapping issues of alcoholism, friendship, parental neglect, and conflicted identity around a multidimensional tragedy.
May 24, 2010
Creative Loafing
Genre: Tragic Novel
The Pitch: Ignacia, a deceased Apache medicine woman, tells the story of two boys in Taos, New Mexico and the murderous love triangle that comes between them.
First Line: "When I passed away, some people swore that Padre Pettit would refuse me a proper Christian burial."
Bilingual Banter: Mister Romero and Tomás Mondragón, the novel's two progtagonists, are foul-mouthed but charming in a boyish manner. "What the hell does she mean by foreplay, anyway?" Tomás asks in earnest. "You know, vato, getting her caliente. You don't do that?" Mister replies. Their occasional spanglish shouldn't be hard to parse for even the most dense of English speakers.
Resume Bold Print: Sumner's short stories were first published in The New Yorker, Atlanta Magazine and other places before being collected for her debut book, Polite Society. She's received a Whiting Award and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. Though she once lived in Taos, New Mexico where The Ghost of Milagro Creek is set, Sumner now calls Rome, Georgia home and teaches at Kennesaw State University.
Haunted Pages: In the years while Sumner was working on The Ghost of Milagro Creek, her husband was diagnosed with and eventually succumbed to Lou Gherig's disease. "I don't know if books can be haunted, but I wrote this one with my favorite haint in mind - a desert-stomping, sax-blowing, bad-boy Catholic from Houma Louisiana - the late David Marr," she says in an essay about writing the book.
Epistolary Forms: Though Ignacia narrates almost all of the novel, the book is occasionally interrupted by a document reproduced verbatim. One chapter is composed entirely of a fax to the Sheriff's Department, another is the text of a signed witness statement.
Hype Quote From the Back Cover: "What a haunting novel...A new spin on the Cain and Abel story that rises to the level of a new twenty-first-century myth. It is old, it is new, it is deep, it is riveting. It is one of those novels you will never forget." - Randall Kenan, author of The Fire This Time.
Genre: Tragic Novel
The Pitch: Ignacia, a deceased Apache medicine woman, tells the story of two boys in Taos, New Mexico and the murderous love triangle that comes between them.
First Line: "When I passed away, some people swore that Padre Pettit would refuse me a proper Christian burial."
Bilingual Banter: Mister Romero and Tomás Mondragón, the novel's two progtagonists, are foul-mouthed but charming in a boyish manner. "What the hell does she mean by foreplay, anyway?" Tomás asks in earnest. "You know, vato, getting her caliente. You don't do that?" Mister replies. Their occasional spanglish shouldn't be hard to parse for even the most dense of English speakers.
Resume Bold Print: Sumner's short stories were first published in The New Yorker, Atlanta Magazine and other places before being collected for her debut book, Polite Society. She's received a Whiting Award and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. Though she once lived in Taos, New Mexico where The Ghost of Milagro Creek is set, Sumner now calls Rome, Georgia home and teaches at Kennesaw State University.
Haunted Pages: In the years while Sumner was working on The Ghost of Milagro Creek, her husband was diagnosed with and eventually succumbed to Lou Gherig's disease. "I don't know if books can be haunted, but I wrote this one with my favorite haint in mind - a desert-stomping, sax-blowing, bad-boy Catholic from Houma Louisiana - the late David Marr," she says in an essay about writing the book.
Epistolary Forms: Though Ignacia narrates almost all of the novel, the book is occasionally interrupted by a document reproduced verbatim. One chapter is composed entirely of a fax to the Sheriff's Department, another is the text of a signed witness statement.
Hype Quote From the Back Cover: "What a haunting novel...A new spin on the Cain and Abel story that rises to the level of a new twenty-first-century myth. It is old, it is new, it is deep, it is riveting. It is one of those novels you will never forget." - Randall Kenan, author of The Fire This Time.
Wyatt Williams
June 30, 2010
June 30, 2010
Booklist
A typical teenage love triangle takes a tragic turn in the barrio of Taos, New Mexico. The mysterious Rocky, a gringa in an almost entirely Hispanic/Native American community, sets two boys raised as brothers on a collision course. Through police reports, witness statements, interviews, and first-person narrative, the story is told and retold from various vantage points and in various time lines, and the suffering, mixed-race community becomes almost its own character as the plot points unravel and remix to tell the story. Well written, with intriguing characters, the novel illuminates a part of American society not often described in fiction.
A typical teenage love triangle takes a tragic turn in the barrio of Taos, New Mexico. The mysterious Rocky, a gringa in an almost entirely Hispanic/Native American community, sets two boys raised as brothers on a collision course. Through police reports, witness statements, interviews, and first-person narrative, the story is told and retold from various vantage points and in various time lines, and the suffering, mixed-race community becomes almost its own character as the plot points unravel and remix to tell the story. Well written, with intriguing characters, the novel illuminates a part of American society not often described in fiction.
Marta Segal Block
May 15, 2010
May 15, 2010
The Ghost of Milagro Creek is a splendid novel, rich in character and landscape, daring in form and voice. Melanie Sumner is an abundantly talented writer who will delight any serious reader who still loves a compelling story.
Robert Olen Butler
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain
New Mexico springs to vivid life in The Ghost of Milagro Creek, a love story that unfolds in such compelling and unexpected ways that it left me breathless and hopeful. Melanie Sumner is a revelation, unfolding scenes that are by turns witty, sly and heartbreakingly lovely. She weaves a multitude of voices into a thoughtful portrait of the complexities of clashing cultures and the nature of family, and yet is also succeeds as a riveting page turner. Book clubs, move this one to the top of your list.
Joshilyn Jackson
New York Times best-selling author of Gods in Alabama and Backseat Saints
New York Times best-selling author of Gods in Alabama and Backseat Saints
"I believe that Melanie’s novel is a very important addition to the growing body of literature that addresses not only the American West, but also the plight of those whose very lives embody its broken past—people who are not sure where they came from or where they are going. Only in a landscape that is suggestive of a world much larger than man can we fully grasp this type of tragedy... I feel strongly that this will be a very important novel not only for you and for me, but for American literature."
Dr. Bill Rice, Scholar of the American West, in a letter to Georges Borchardt.
