This is Erik Orrantia's third book, following the publication of Blue Tiles and Normal Miguel, the 2010 Lambda Literary Award winner in the Gay Romance category, and after reading this one I'm really sorry I haven't already read his others.

There are no wasted words in this novel centered on Acapulco and the international drug trade that impacts the lives of both the Hispanic and indigenous people of the area. Written with a deep appreciation for Mexican ways, it's a novel of suspense but also of personal growth for the principals, and although it has heart-pounding tension it also has moments of deep calm. In less talented hands, a cast this large would be a confusing jumble of cardboard cutouts being pushed around a monochromatic landscape. Orrantia, however, has the talent and the insight to limn his characters with spare, deft prose that brings them to life on the page. The writing is by turns propulsive, dense, jittery, serene, poetic – the pace supporting the action like a film score without intruding on the consciousness, the way the music worked in classic films of the 1930s and 40s.

The parallel stories follow four main characters: Benito Duarte, a young man working as a drug runner; Brídget Buenblanco, a successful businesswoman and active supporter of the Green Party; Carlos Calderón Ibarra, an investigative reporter for El Costero, an Acapulco newspaper; and Atua, an indigenous girl of the Núkul tribe whose adoptive father is the local shaman. At first, I found the rapid shifts from one character's circumstances to another's disorienting, but the scenes and players soon sorted themselves out and the disorientation revealed itself as a major part of the story, an offstage non-voice whose moods, unreasonable and Quixotic, controlled everyone and every thing. Carlos Calderón is working in a dangerous environment – dangerous for tenacious reporters, dangerous for the drugs workers, dangerous for the forces of law. As he works his way closer to the center of power, following hunches, racing to crime scenes, working on understanding the underpinnings of the trade, he never actually makes contact with Bennie Duarte, but his news reports affect Duarte's every action. Similarly, Brídget Buenblanco's support of the local representative in the national Congress, a Green Party member, keeps her tethered to the axle of national politics as well as local concerns while she runs her business empire, an empire putatively based on ownership of the premier private gymnasium/racquet club in the state. And far from the strain of modern life, Atua is navigating the stresses of growing into her own power, feeling her way into the rôle she believes is her destiny as shaman successor to her adoptive father, even though her tribe has never had a female curandero before.

These lives cross and re-cross, with Calderón and Buenblanco only tangentially aware of each other, and Atua's life is seemingly untouched by the conflicts of drugs and modern commerce until mischance brings Bennie Duarte through her village. Even then, the contact of contemporary culture with the seasonal rhythms of village life is apparently as brief and inconsequential as the bouncing of a stone falling down a hill. Only when Bennie appears during a peyote ritual does his presence make a significant impact on Atua, and the results are life changing for both of them. Numerous subsidiary lines develop as Calderón works his way closer and closer to the mysterious Tío Che's seat of power in the drug world, and the skill Orrantia deploys in criss-crossing these and finally in the neat but surprising dénouements is masterful. 

I love discovering good writers in any genre, but I'm especially gratified when I find someone who can make me enjoy a type of story I would otherwise pass over. There is enough bloodshed in this tale that I would, under ordinary circumstances and reading a less gifted writer, close the book and set it aside. Orrantia's storytelling gripped me so firmly that I read the book through in one long day, not aware that my backside had gone numb until I tried to stand after reading the last page. As I said above, his characters are alive on the page, an achievement not less amazing in the face of his creation of a completely realized but entirely fictional indigenous culture in the Núkul, Atua's people. There is certainly gore and grue, but none of it is gratuitous and each instance serves the story and gives us better insight into the characters.

In constructing the story, the author has taken a subtle route to resolution, providing a fulcrum in Carlos for two characters who achieve personal success in very different ways – Brídget and Atua – without showing his hand until the very end. The fact that both Brídget and Atua attain fulfillment by working against the expectations of their male-dominated societies is never stressed in precisely those terms, but the businesswoman and the shaman-in-training balance each other in their effects on the worlds they inhabit.

Erik Orrantia is an extraordinary writer. He brought Mexico and its many contradictions to life in ways no other author I know has done, while telling a story about personal strength and the overthrow of entrenched role models. The rise of Atua into her own power is balanced by the fall of other characters, with Carlos Calderón Ibarra the brace the scales depend from. I couldn't put this book down, not only for the careful use of language but also for the almost painterly depiction of the characters. Don't expect look-at-me writing: the author disappears in the economy of his words and the acuteness of his observation. Several days after finishing the book, I'm still spellbound. I recommend this book to anyone interested in good stories, interesting characters, and dramatic eloquence. I suggest, however, that you buy through OmniLit.com in this case, since the publisher's Web site is extremely difficult to navigate and has a tendency to stall and/or crash. I hope for Etopia's sake that they are able to improve their Web presence soon; meanwhile, go to OmniLit to buy, searching for this title and his other two titles currently in print by specifying his name in the search window at the upper right.

(Blue Tiles, AuthorHouse, 2007, no longer in print)

(Normal Miguel, Cheyenne/Bristlecone, 2010)

The Equinox Convergence, by Erik Orrantia
2011, Etopia Press; 357 pp., e-book – various formats, $5.99 - ISBN: 978-1-936751-31-0 (publisher pdf version) or ASIN B0054S6U0C (Amazon Kindle)

 

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