84 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ SEPTEMEBER 2, 2019
Review_FICTION Review_FICTIONand the woman from Kansas who loves
them both. Muriel agrees to marry Lee
not long after he and his brother, Julius,
step off their ship in Long Beach, but it’s
Julius with whom she finds a haunting
affinity. When he disappears, both
Muriel and Lee live for word from him
again. Muriel and Julius are gamblers;
Muriel over-
hears horse bet-
ting tips from
men who drink
at the Heyday
Lounge in San
Diego where
she works.
Muriel wins
enough at the
Del Mar race-
track to buy her
husband the lot on which he builds their
dream house. Meanwhile, in Las Vegas,
Julius falls in love with Henry, a tender
card cheat who’s run out of town.
Desperate to find him, Julius returns to
his brother’s house, steals money from
Muriel, and goes in search of him.
Muriel, in turn, searches for Julius, and
finds herself instead. SoCal’s illicit gay
joints, Mexico, and memories of Kansas
are finely wrought, though by the time
Muriel discovers that the mystery Julius
represents actually resides deep inside
her own self, Pufahl’s gorgeous meta-
phors and heartbreaking revelations may
make readers feel like less is more.
Peopled by singular characters and suf-
fused with a keen sense of time and
place, Pufahl’s debut casts a fascinating
spell. (Nov.)Jakarta
Rodrigo Márquez Tizano, trans. from the Spanish
by Thomas Bunstead. Coffee House, $16.95
trade paper (160p) ISBN 978-1-56689-563-7
Márquez Tizano’s debut is a feverishly
depicted panorama of a city laid low by a
series of surreal events and misfortunes. An
unnamed narrator and his partner rarely
leave the room they share as their illness-
ravaged city teeters on the brink of
disaster, its citizens enlivened only by a
vast gambling network centered on a
near-sacred sport. As some new horror
approaches, the narrator chronicles his
childhood teachers and their bizarre lessons,
his life as a former hazmat worker duringthe peak of the “Z-bug” epidemic, and
later as a refugee in a series of under-
ground tunnels meant to prevent the
spread of the virus. As he recalls these
strange, apocalyptic experiences, he
describes a unique cast of characters,
including his prophetic friend Morgan,
whose journals seem to be sending mes-
sages to the narrator, and his partner Clara,
who has discovered a strange stone that
may or may not be granting her visions of
the past. Lacking a clear or typical trajec-
tory, this short novel is dense with
imagery and boundless imagination, cre-
ating a vividly grotesque reality for those
who exist within its society: the disillu-
sioned gamblers, the cleanup crews, the
bureaucrats, and the Z-bug’s dead.
Blending the wildly dystopian with the
mundanity of the everyday, this time-
jumping narrative is a bolt of originality
from a writer to watch. (Nov.)Return to the Enchanted Island
Johary Ravaloson, trans. from the French by
Allison M. Charette. Amazon Crossing, $19.95
trade paper (176p) ISBN 978-1-984803-19-1
A young man is thrown from his privi-
leged childhood in Madagascar into Paris
and the fullness of modernity in
Ravaloson’s sensuous reimagining of a
Malagasy myth. Ietsy Razak lies awake
during sleepless nights at home in
Madagascar, thinking about his past. He
has always been blessed by the wealth of
his family, but also by his namesake:
Ietsy, the world’s first man according to
Malagasy mythology. However, money
and faith in the power of this origin story
cannot spare him from being kicked out
of his Jesuit secondary school for doing
drugs on campus. Ietsy’s father sends him
to Paris to finish his education, but
instead of studying, he succumbs to the
charms of Parisian nightlife. He also dis-
covers that his dark skin influences his
every interaction as he experiences racism
and also a false solidarity with those who
were “drawn to him because of the color
of his skin but who didn’t have a faraway
place to hang their hopes like he did.”
Ietsy loves too deeply, seeks too hard to be
accepted, and clings always to his nostalgia
for home—where he, inevitably, must
return. In this fresh rendition of the
familiar prodigal son tale, Ravaloson
mines his Malagasy roots to weavetogether a florid narrative filled with
trenchant descriptions of the legacy of
colonization and globalization. (Nov.)Birdie & Jude
Phyllis Moore. CreateSpace, $12.99 trade
paper (336p) ISBN 978-1-986712-95-8
Moore’s insightful novel centers on a
friendship between two women of dif-
ferent generations. Hurricane Gino is
heading toward Texas, and Birdie Barnes,
an older woman, is living on the island of
Galveston. While walking her dog on the
beach before the storm hits, she finds
26-year-old Jude, who’s just been released
from the hospital after a car accident that
killed her friend. Jude’s injuries don’t
appear to be life-threatening, but Birdie
invites Jude back to her home to rest and
shower because, “I’m tired of looking at
that clump of dried blood in your hair.”
The two share stories as ferocious winds
shake the shutters, and each senses she
knows the other. Birdie, never married,
has lived on the island her entire life, while
Jude has moved through foster homes since
she was four years old. Birdie is close to her
only living relative, her adult nephew,
Barry, while Jude’s only friend, Casey, died
in the car wreck that injured Jude. When
Birdie decides to go on a cruise with friends
after the hurricane has passed, she asks Jude
to house-sit, and the subsequent meeting
between Jude and Barry is fateful. Birdie’s
beautiful home and the beach town are
lovely settings for the connections between
women struggling with questions about
their life choices. Moore brings depth and
emotional punch to this riveting story of
magically entwined lives. (BookLife)Mystery/Thriller
Oppo
Tom Rosenstiel. Ecco, $27.99 (336p) ISBN 978-
0-06-289260-7
In this diverting if didactic political
novel from Rosenstiel (The Good Lie),
Democratic presidential candidate David
Traynor, a tech billionaire and “bad boy
reformer,” wants Wendy Upton, a
Republican senator from Arizona, on his
ticket as vice president; so does Republican
Dick Bakke. But before Wendy can commit
to either, she receives an anonymous threat:
“If you accept the offer to run as vice presi-