From PUBLISHERS WEEKLY: These rough-cut tales from Santa Fe author Jaramillo paint a grim portrait of disenfranchised native New Mexicans. New money Santa Fe enrages locals like the young Hispanic narrator of "Whisper of a Spider," whose alcohol-and-resentment-fueled tirades are about all there is of him. ("I always feel oppressed no matter what," he bemoans, when thrown out of a bar.) In another dispiriting first-person tale, a young man acts as a gigolo ("a very lucrative endeavor in Santa Fe for a young virulent Latin spic") to a woman he calls the Brit—one in legions of "wealthy older lonely desperate white women residing in the subterranean foothills... [and] willing to pay for a young brown man's superior sex organ." Both act out in increasingly ugly, destructive ways. "Spirit of Madness," the long, tedious, sad diary of a young man's slow death by drug addiction, records the obliteration of will and personality in the face of society's apathy. Uncouth and unvarnished, Jaramillo's speakers can all agree with the narrator of "Living Briefly in Paradox," who notes of his family: "We all knew we had no future in Santa Fe."

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This young Latino writer’s first collection of fictional short stories embody original tales revolving around the experience of what it was like to grow up in a place called The City Different. It focuses on the darker side of humanity: drive-by shootings, police brutality, anarchism, sexual deviance, drug abuse, political protest, moral disintegration and a host of other retellings of the life of a generation Xer growing up too fast in a hostile world where the only salvation is self-forgiveness.

With Kafkaesque emotion, Baudelairean delicacy, and Garcia Marquez dexterity, the narrative springs from a gifted writer with an unapologetic taste for the controversial. Highly experimental in language, thought and rhetoric, Jaramillo strives to corner a reader’s heart and sabotage the accepted notions of perceived reality while leaving the reader wanting more.

ANGELO JARAMILLO was born and raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico and graduated from New Mexico Highlands University. He says, with a laugh, “I’ve never driven a brand new car and I accept donations, supplications, ransoms, and handouts.” He is now working on a political study of the first female mayor of Santa Fe.

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Hardcover:
6 X 9
ISBN: 978-0-86534-534-8
268 pp.,$28.95

Softcover:
6 X 9
ISBN: 978-0-86534-535-5
268 pp.,$22.95