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Once More to the River: Family Snapshots of Growing Up, Getting Out and Going Back

In "Once More to the River," Erasmo Guerra writes a moving account of his boyhood on the Texas-Mexico border.

An award-winning novelist and journalist, Guerra explores present-day political and cultural realities, and recounts the shattering loss his family suffered when his teenage sister was murdered.

Told with lyrical prose and a reporter’s ear for the “Tex-Mex” language of the region, these stories capture the voices of South Texas. By turns humorous and haunting, powerful and tender, this collection is an intensely personal chronicle of tragedy and the triumph of survival.

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From the Introduction:

Many nights my mom stood on the front porch and hollered at my sister, brother and me to get home after we spent the day wandering the neighborhood. She called us desvalagados. Not exactly lost, but loose.

She didn’t like us spending too much time in “borrowed houses.”

“There’s nothing like your own home,” Mom said. “No hay más como tu propia casa.”

And there never will be. Although I’ve lived in New York City for nearly two decades, when I sit down at my writing desk I still hear my mom’s echoes and return to that stretch of the Texas-Mexico border along the Rio Grande River where I grew up.

Each of these stories first appeared in magazines, online journals and literary anthologies, but this book gathers them together in a proper collection of their own.

  • Format
  • paperback
  • Pages
  • 70
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9781480223738
  • Release date
  • 2012