Mexico : stories
(Book)

The unforgettable characters in Josh Barkan's astonishing and beautiful story collection-chef, architect, nurse, high school teacher, painter, beauty queen, classical bass player, plastic surgeon, businessman, mime-are simply trying to lead their lives and steer clear of violence. Yet, inevitably, crime has a way of intruding on their lives all the same. A surgeon finds himself forced into performing a risky procedure on a narco killer. A teacher struggles to protect lovestruck students whose forbidden romance has put them in mortal peril. A painter's freewheeling ways land him in the back of a kidnapper's car. Again and again, the walls between "ordinary life" and cartel violence are shown to be paper thin, and when they collapse the consequences are life-changing. -- from Amazon.