Elizabeth Gonzalez James — THE BULLET SWALLOWER — in Conversation with Grace Talusan on Feb 28 at 6:30 PM
Elizabeth Gonzalez James will discuss her literary magical realist Western, The Bullet Swallower—think Gabriel García Márquez, Larry McMurtry, and Carmen Maria Machado—with author Grace Talusan (The Body Papers).
About
Based on (mostly) true events, The Bullet Swallower is a magical realism western about violence and revenge, a story that asks who pays for the sins of our ancestors, and whether it is possible to be better than our forebears.
In 1895 Antonio Sonoro is a fearsome bandido who sets off from his home in northern Mexico to rob a train in Texas with his younger brother. But when the robbery goes awry and the two brothers land in the crosshairs of the Texas Rangers, Antonio is launched into a quest for revenge that endangers both his family, and his soul.
In 1964 Jaime Sonoro, Antonio’s grandson, is Mexico’s favorite singing cowboy. But his comfortable life is disrupted when he discovers a book that purports to tell the entire history of his family beginning with Cain and Abel. Reading the book Jaime not only discovers the multitude of horrific crimes committed by his ancestors, but he realizes that these crimes have opened up a cosmic debt, and that he may be the next in line to repay it.
A family saga that’s epic in scope but compact in form, The Bullet Swallower tackles border politics, intergenerational trauma, and the legacies of racism and colonialism in a lush setting and stunning prose that evokes Cormac McCarthy and Gabriel García Márquez.
Praise
“This is a Western full of classic tropes, but it also surprises with its philosophical examination of generational trauma, justice and retribution, and racism and politics. The supernatural element ties together the timelines and the themes, adding resonance. With a powerfully drawn setting and viscerally convincing characters, James’s novel is a strong addition to any general fiction collection.”
—Library Journal, *starred review
“Her blending of fact and fantasy, magic and morality, and the weight of family history is a success, making The Bullet Swallower both a page-turner with impeccable pacing and a complicated narrative full of unexpected elements and deeper questions…more than just a fabulous western.”
—Sarah Beth West, Shelf Awareness
“Elizabeth Gonzalez James has taken the raw history of the Texas-Mexico borderlands, simmered it with her own epic family story and a dash of the uncanny, and produced a phantasmagoric guisado of a novel in which past and present, real and unreal, are blended together in perfect balance.”
—Stephen Harrigan, author of The Gates of the Alamo
The Author(s)
Elizabeth Gonzalez James is the author of the novels Mona at Sea (SFWP, 2021) and The Bullet Swallower (forthcoming Simon & Schuster, 2024), as well as the chapbook, Five Conversations About Peter Sellers (Texas Review Press, 2023). Her stories and essays have appeared in The Idaho Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Rumpus, StorySouth, PANK, and elsewhere, and have received numerous Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. She was Interviews Editor at The Rumpus, and a former contributor to Ploughshares Blog. Originally from South Texas, Elizabeth now lives with her family in Massachusetts.
Grace Talusan is the author of The Body Papers, which won the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant writing and the Massachusetts Book Award for Nonfiction. In 2022, she was awarded fellowships from United States Artists, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Brother Thomas Fund. She teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program at Brown University.
At the Event
Books by both authors will be available for purchase at the event and in store.
Or purchase online below.
FIVE CONVERSATIONS ABOUT PETER SELLERS
THE BULLET SWALLOWER (preorder)
THE BODY PAPERS — Winner of The Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Grace Talusan’s critically acclaimed memoir The Body Papers, a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection, powerfully explores the fraught contours of her own life as a Filipino immigrant and survivor of cancer and childhood abuse.
Author photo of Elizabeth Gonzalez James by Nancy Rothstein.