The latest joyride through Nuyorica by celebrated author Edgardo Vega Yunqué. From Overlook in July. To read the first chapter go to Rebeccahorowitz.com
Coming Soon to Your Nearest Bookstore from the author who brought you Omaha Bigelow
Rebecca Horowitz, Puerto Rican Sex Freak
What does it say about America when a middle-class young woman dissatisfied with her mixed ethnicity decides to convert to being Puerto Rican? That is exactly what red-headed Rebecca Lynn Horowitz does. A pregnancy prevention social worker to Latina teens, living a fairly sedate life in the middle class neighborhood of Brooklyn's Park Slope our heroine undergoes a transformation such as you've never read. At a party in the summer of 2000 she meets Charlie Maisonet, a Puerto Rican dandy, and her biological clock starts ticking twice as fast. Through the twists and turns of her romance with Charlie, she moves to his pad in the East Village, becomes Zoraida Delgado, a Puerto Rican exotic dancer, and begins living la vida loca.
Join the author as he once again explores the environs of this pseudo-bohemian Manhattan playground, bends the rules of novel writing and satirizes the memoir, sexual politics, gender roles, and the pretense of our society. He even throws in his own photos of some of the places in the East Village that the characters frequent, including Katz Delicatessen, The Sunshine Theater, Two Boots and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Are they really his photos or are they Zoraida's, a photography and film enthusiast?
Oh, the novel also addresses the issue of the Iraq War in a most ingenuous way.
From The Overlook Press in July 2008.
Go to the "My Works" section of this website and read a small excerpt from Chapter 1.
Edgardo Vega Yunqué This is the site for the literary work of award-winning author Edgardo Vega Yunqué. He is a novelist and short story writer.
Esta son las páginas de la obra literaria del escritor, Edgardo Vega Yunqué, novelista y cuentista puertorriqueño. Si desea enterarse de los particulares por favor pase a la sección titulada Español.
Yunqué looking vaguely (Vegauely?) authorial. It's the right spelling. Ethereal is something else and he hardly looks that.
A new novel from the Award Winning author. HarperCollins October, 2005.
*Starred Review* In his ambitious third novel, Vega Yunque charts the intricately interrelated fortunes of two American families united by marriage: the Puerto Rican Romeros and the Irish Boyles. Adopting a loose, fuguelike structure, the author intercuts his central theme--the coming-of-age story of 17-year-old Kenny Romero--with the emerging personal and political life histories of his parents and grandparents. Most of these stories involve closely guarded secrets and surprising connections that invite readers to consider the large issues of good and evil, freedom and oppression, innocence, trust, and betrayal that play out in Kenny's life and in his self-imposed quest to find a lost cow in a dark, dangerous, and tangled woods. Yes, some of this--well, a lot of it--is over the top, but the author is a bravura storyteller with an extraordinary ability to create fascinating, emotion-engaging characters. Although the main story is set in the early 1980s, the novel's subplots involving political terrorism and immigrant resistance to imposed assimilation are absolutely relevant to today's America. Michael Cart
Blood Fugues resonates as a coming-of-age-after-age novel. Accomplished and intricate, it recognizes the histories that shapes us and the ones we create that shape others.
-Pages Magazine
Synopsis
When Kenny Romero, a star high school athlete, journeys from New York City to his summer job at a dairy farm in upstate New York, he makes choices that bring him in direct confrontation with nature and challenge his more primitive instincts for survival. The action unfolds during his second year working on the farm, which is run by a French Canadian named Henri Brunet and his son Gabriel, whose long-ago stint as a Peace Corps worker in Peru has left him a haunted man.
During Kenny’s summer upstate, his father Tommy Romero and his uncle Jerry Boyle--both former NYPD undercover narcotics partners fired from the force-- reveal their involvement in gun running. As they tell their story the reason for their dismissal becomes obvious. Kenny’s mother, Fran, also tells about her own struggle with a life-changing option. Ultimately, at the core of the tale is Kenny’s maternal grandmother, Mary Boyle’s, own secret.
Meanwhile, Kenny and his girlfriend, Claudia, deepen their relationship as undercurrents of their families’ secrets are revealed against the background of his ordeal.
When a pregnant cow wanders off into the woods, Kenny decides to search for it, setting off alone one night armed with a rifle, a knife, and an ax. His fateful decision pits Kenny against the forces of nature, triggering a crisis with harrowing consequences for his already troubled family.
A vivid, gripping novel of action and mystery, Blood Fugues explores the ways in which family ties and secrets spin their way into our present lives, shaping the boundaries of our desires, our fears, and our survival.
Read and laugh with the author of this biting satire. The Lamentable Journey of Omaha Bigelow into the Impenetrable Loisaida Jungle, published by The Overlook Press, October 2004.
His novel No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew It Cauze Bill Bailey Ain't Never Coming Home Again was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in October 2003. The paperback to this novel is being published by Picador in October 2004. Additionally, The House of Books in The Netherlands is publishing the novel with the title Vidamía in October 2004. You may read exerpts from the author's work, and hear the author read by going to Quick Links on the upper left hand side of this page.
By clicking the appropriate buttons and links you can learn about the author, his published books, upcoming events, and future work.
