Under The Bridge/Bajo El Puente: Stories From The Border/Relatos Desde La Frontera - Tapa blanda

In the title story of this short story collection set along the Texas-Mexico border, young Monica waits for her boyfriend Martin under the bridge connecting El Paso and Ciudad Juarez. Martin is a pasamojados, someone who smuggles people across the river. When he asks Monica if she wants to leave with him, she's afraid. Afraid to suffer the way her parents did when they went north, suffocating in heat and fear, unable to find a job. But in spite of her fears, she finds herself at the river bank, being pushed into the tire tube that serves as a raft.
Mexican writer Rosario Sanmiguel crafts intriguing narratives about solitary women in search of their place, caught between the past and the present. The stories follow these women - some from privileged backgrounds and others from desperate circumstances - through seedy bars, hotel rooms, and crowded streets of the border.
Originally published in Mexico as Callejon Sucre y otros relatos, John Pluecker's translation captures the nuances of border dialect and irony. The seven stories interweave the opposing themes of solitude and connectedness, longing and privilege, fear and audacity, all of which are juxtaposed on the boundary of self-awareness.