Introduction
Many nights, my mom stood on the front porch and hollered at my sister, brother and me to get home after we spent the day wandering the neighborhood. She called us desvalagados. Not exactly lost, but loose.
She didn’t like us spending too much time in “borrowed houses.”
“There’s nothing like your own home,” Mom said. “No hay más como tu propia casa.”
And there never will be. Although I’ve lived in New York City for nearly two decades, when I sit down at my writing desk I still hear my mom’s echoes and return to that stretch of the Texas-Mexico border along the Rio Grande where I was born and raised.
These stories first appeared in magazines, online journals and literary anthologies, but this book gathers them together in a proper collection of their own.