Bulletproof vest
Subtitle: the ballad of an outlaw and his daughter
By: Maria Venegas
Publisher: Granta
Published: 2014
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9781847083463
Subjects: Fathers and daughters; Mexican Americans; Fiction
Description: Maria Venegas had been estranged from her father for fourteen years when she finally made the journey back from the US to Mexico to visit him in the old hacienda where both he and she were born. As they begin spending summers and holidays together, herding cattle and fixing barbed-wire fence posts, he starts to share stories with her, tales of a dramatic life filled with both intense love and brutal violence - from the final conversations he had with his own father and his extradition from the US for murder, to his mother's pride after he shot a man for the first time at age twelve. In spare, gripping prose, Venegas traces her own life and her father's through the stories she inherited from him and gradually comes to understand the violent undercurrent that has shaped them both.
Table of contents: title: Bulletproof vest; title: Handicapped bastard; title: Witness protection program; title: The hallelujahs; title: The grapes of wrath; title: Runaway train; title: Love, sweet love; title: We call police; title: The fugitive; title: A fine young bull; title: You say Jerusalem, I say Paris; title: The wall; title: Man-in-the-moon marigolds; title: House of scorpions; title: Cowboy mouth; title: Family portrait; title: The museum; title: Dust devils; title: Blue dress; title: Shooting guns like shooting stars; title: Quelites; title: El cien vacas; title: Hailstorm; title: The kidnapping; title: Starfish; title: Blue moon.