Borderlands: Short Fictions by James Carlos Blake

Seven stories and a novella from a master author of the American West

Dolores and her mother have not seen Dolores’s daddy for five days. Dolores—whom daddy calls Sugargirl—leaps to greet him when she hears his heavy steps on the front porch. Daddy is drunk, battered, and smells of cheap perfume; his return is cut short when Momma chases him out of the house with a hot iron. A few years later, when Momma is dead and Daddy is serving a thirty-to-life stint in the state penitentiary, Dolores gets a letter addressed to Sugargirl. She is sixteen, on her own, and life will not get easier from here.

This novella and the seven accompanying stories represent the finest short fiction of celebrated western author James Carlos Blake. These tales span centuries and continents, but the characters share a common trait: They are citizens of the borderlands, from whence death is the only escape.