Paperback
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
Three teenagers are traveling northeast in a navy blue Ford pickup. Turi has fled his abusive family to see the beautiful New England landscape he's always dreamed about. Arnulfo is undocumented and wants only to find someplace to work and live. Molly seeks a new life far away from her nowhere Missouri town. Turi and Arnulfo are best friends. Molly and Turi are falling in love.
But for all their innocence, violence follows the trio at every turn. The mean viejito who owns the truck wants it back. The narco who hid a deadly shipment in the truck really, really wants it back. And the imperturbable hitman the narco sends after the trio will kill anyone who stands in his way. Turi, Arnulfo, and Molly might outrun the carnage that's stalking them ... but they can't elude the chaos they're carrying, no matter how far they go.
A literary novel with the propulsion of a thriller, a genre joyride written in the prose of a master, Nobody's Pilgrims both offers and questions the possibility of escape in America — like Huckleberry Finn with a gritty frontera twist.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781947627413 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Lee & Low Books |
| Publication date: | 05/10/2022 |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Sales rank: | 395,035 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d) |
| Age Range: | 16 - 18 Years |
About the Author
Troncoso has taught fiction and nonfiction at the Yale Writers' Workshop in New Haven, Connecticut for many years. He has served as a judge for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the New Letters Literary Awards in the Essay category. His work has recently appeared in New Letters, Yale Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Texas Monthly, and New Guard Literary Review.
The son of Mexican immigrants, Troncoso grew up on the east side of El Paso in rural Ysleta. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and received two graduate degrees in international relations and philosophy from Yale University. A Fulbright scholar, Troncoso was inducted into the Hispanic Scholarship Fund's Alumni Hall of Fame and the Texas Institute of Letters (TIL). He currently serves as TIL President.
Read an Excerpt
At the dusty corner of Americas Avenue and Socorro Road, Turi falls into an uneasy half-sleep under the June stars. The smell of the cotton fields wafts over him. He imagines the Milky Way shining against the blue-black sky like a floating river of lights. Turi has always loved staring at the worlds beyond this earth. He can’t wait to keep reading The Mystery of the Mighty Housatonic River. His ribs ache if he twists a certain way, and one side of his tongue is puffy inside his mouth. Like gigantic, heedless mechanical monsters, eighteen-wheelers roar by him on Americas and unleash rolling gusts of wind that disperse into the fields. He smells alfalfa and cattle somewhere faraway in the cool desert. After a while, as he drifts in and out of consciousness, his headache is gone and the pain in his midsection disappears as long as he keeps still. It is a beautiful summer night in the desert. His mother would have loved this night.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Turi hears a familiar voice say, as he feels a gentle kick at the bottom of one sneaker. He smiles even before opening his eyes.
“I want to go with you. Can I?”
“Don’t know why not,” Arnulfo Muñoz says, smiling at Turi almost as if he expected him to be there. A truck speeds past them on Americas, its headlights illuminating Turi’s face like slow lightning. Arnulfo holds out his hand to haul Turi to his feet. Turi grimaces as he stands up. “What happened to you? You okay?”
“Fell down. Don’t worry about it. I’m fine, ese. What time is it?”
“About, let me see, twenty minutes past—oh, here he is!” Arnulfo says.
A shiny navy blue Ford pickup, with a double cab and a large chromed toolbox in back, slides to a stop on the gravel. The old man Juanito stares at Turi, does not smile through his golden teeth. He waits a moment, then jerks his head for both of them to get in.