A Man of His Village

Book excerpt: Florentino Cruz takes one last job before he heads home to Mexico. He left his village at the age of fifteen, a migrant farm worker dreaming of love, honor, and riches. He accepts a promising job in Alaska, the magnificent climax to his years of toil in the United States. But the expedition collapses in mutiny and murder, leaving Florentino lost and fleeing for his life through a fire-ravaged wilderness. "A Man of His Village" occupies the epic terrain of the West, from the borderlands of California to the strawberry fields of Oregon, from urban Seattle to rural Mexico, from the crowded slums of Tijuana to the isolation of the Alaskan bush. This is a novel of pride and redemption, the voyage of a passionate soul out of innocence across a continental landscape of exploitation and betrayal. "Peppery and sweet, lively and subtle, funny and horrific.a beautiful page-turner of a novel, full of rich and generous insights. You'll long remember Florentino, whose dreams carry him far from his impoverished homeland, deep into hell. Like Jack London and John Steinbeck, Tanyo Ravicz looks closely at the ties binding the powerful and the powerless in the West.First-rate realism from a fine new voice in American fiction." -Jean Anderson, author of "In Extremis and Other Alaskan Stories"