Barefoot Dogs: Stories - Softcover

Ruiz-Camacho, Antonio

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1476784973 ISBN 13: 9781476784977

Publisher: Scribner, 2016

Synopsis

Winner of the Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters * A San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book of 2015 * Fiction Finalist for the 2015 Writers’ League of Texas Book Awards * A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2015 * One of the Texas Observer’s “Five Books We Loved in 2015” * One of PRI’s “The World’s Five Books You Should Read in 2016”

“Profound and wrenching...A deeply moving chronicle of one family’s collective devastation, full of remarkable wisdom and humor” (The New York Times Book Review) that follows the members of a wealthy Mexican family after their patriarch is kidnapped.

On an unremarkable night, José Victoriano Arteaga—the head of a thriving Mexico City family—vanishes on his way home from work. The Arteagas find few answers; the full truth of what happened to Arteaga is lost to the shadows of Mexico’s vast underworld. But soon packages arrive to the family house, offering horrifying clues.

Fear, guilt, and the prospect of financial ruin fracture the once-proud family and scatter them across the globe, yet delicate threads still hold them together: in a swimming pool in Palo Alto, Arteaga’s grandson struggles to make sense of the grief that has hobbled his family; in Mexico City, Arteaga’s mistress alternates between rage and heartbreak as she waits, in growing panic, for her lover’s return; in Austin, the Arteagas’ housekeeper tries to piece together a second life in an alienating new land; in Madrid, Arteaga’s son takes his dog through the hot and unforgiving streets, in search of his father’s ghost.

A stunningly original exploration of the wages of a hidden war, Barefoot Dogs is a heartfelt elegy to the stolen innocence of every family struck by tragedy. Urgent and vital fiction, “these powerful stories are worthy of rereading in order to fully digest the far-reaching implications of one man’s disappearance...this singular book affords the reader the chance to step inside a world of privilege and loss, and understand how the two are inextricably intertwined” (San Francisco Chronicle).

About this title

Review:

An Amazon Best Book of the Month for March 2015: When the patriarch of a wealthy Mexican family is kidnapped his immediate family is forced to flee the country – leaving their money, friends and home behind. In each of these nine linked stories, Antonio Ruiz-Camacho follows a different member of the Arteaga family as they deal with the legacy of their last name and the tragedy that befell it. In ‘Okie’, a grandson struggles to make sense of his new home in Palo Alto; in ‘Origami Prunes’ Arteaga’s daughter begins an affair in an Austin Laundromat; and in the title story, a new dad wanders the Madrid streets adrift and aloof, seeing visions of his father. Barefoot Dogs depicts a searing portrait of innocence and experience: the unshakeable belief that everything will work out against the salty hard certainty that loss, betrayal and evil are lurking around the corner. These stories are fresh, funny and full of life. What makes them so memorable is the universal connection we all have to home, that at some point in our lives, all we want is to be back there. For many of us that is a given, and for others, it is an impossibility – a crushing reality that Ruiz-Camacho executes flawlessly. – Al Woodworth

About the Author:

Antonio Ruiz-Camacho has worked as a journalist in Mexico, Europe, and the United States. A 2009 John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University and a 2014 Dobie Paisano Fellow in Fiction, Ruiz-Camacho earned his MFA from the New Writers Project at the University of Texas at Austin. He is from Toluca, Mexico, and lives in Austin, Texas, with his family.

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1476784973
• ISBN 13: 9781476784977
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192