NEW TESTAMENTS

A suite of stories of life on the U.S.–Mexico border.

“I didn’t believe he was telling the whole truth, but I didn’t question him.” Gilb is a master of stories concerning people who are constantly reinventing themselves, always trying to escape one delicate dilemma or another. Indeed, the title notwithstanding, most of the stories here involve tribulations worthy of Job, if not a few encounters with Delilah, his actors working-class men and women who are running out of options on the hard paths they’ve followed. One, met in passing, is a should-be retiree in Mexico City who finds himself old and without a pension. He sighs, “I never thought....” His interlocutor, a Chicano visitor, says, enigmatically, “I’m lucky...because I didn’t either.” Another, working in a laundry, falls in love with a woman married to a very scary, if momentarily absent, man from across the line. Doubting his self-worth, he recalls how little he has been valued by others: “I didn’t hate school, I especially didn’t hate learning. The main thing they taught me, yelling into my face, was that I was wasting their time and money.” Many of Gilb’s supporting characters have done time; many live in the wake of tragedies of all kinds. These things are matter-of-fact realities, as are dreams of money, fame, even just getting out of town. Gilb’s prose is often a lively Spanglish: “I was la conecta in a big music scene world of marijuanos in Texas, Denver, LA even,” says one dreamer. “This was how mota got to everyone back in the day.” It all makes for a memorable chronicle of people caught between nations, classes, and cultures, all doing their best just to get by.

A well-crafted summoning of people living ordinary lives on la frontera, in all their sorrow and splendor.