Chasing Shadows
Lucrecia Guerrero
(Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
2000 Chronicle Books
ISBN: 0811827941


In a collection of short stories of life along the US-Mexico border in the fictional town of Mesquite, two cultures have melted together & illusions can almost become reality.

Oven in Heaven; The Girdle; Gloves of Her Own; Butterfly; Love and Happiness; Cloud-Shadow; Return of the Spirit, & more...

The actual book of Chasing Shadows is well-endowed with full page prints of patterns, perhaps of wallpaper or fabric, which enhance this author's graceful & lyrical language.

Lucrecia Guerrero has drawn for the reader, in eleven individual yet connected stories, the sunlight of a desert land & the brightness of hopes & desires, as well as the shadows in the darkness of people's homes & hearts.

Men, women, boys, girls & ghosts come alive from the earth of this author's imagination. Dusty & poor, simple & complicated her people are filled with ordinary passions & tangible terrors. Lucrecia Guerrero has breathed life into an imaginary community & when I closed Chasing Shadows, I was certain I could hear their voices, see their homes, their clothes, their families. Sure I had walked through their town.

Well done!
(04/07/02)

Rebecca