MARIA, MARIA

Magical realism and myth meet dystopic themes in this debut collection of short fiction set in the Americas.

Set against a backdrop of political inequities, climate catastrophes, and other crises, Rubio’s stories offer alternative ways of squaring injustices (or getting revenge), beginning with “Brujería for Beginners,” a second-person, instructional story about learning “spiritual vigilantism or expedited karma.” “Calling it black magic,” the teacher insists, “is devoid of context,” especially when the context in question is domestic abuse. Similarly, in “Tunnels,” the Fogata family, fed up with the racism and violence in 1990s California, hatches up a plot to release pigeons emitting powerful electromagnetic pulses that bring the entire Southwest to a grinding halt. A magic mirror that transports the viewer to other versions of life allows the narrator of “Carlos Across Time and Space,” one of the collection’s standouts, to picture a different death for Carlos, who was senselessly murdered at a high school graduation party. Magical possibilities compete with reason and often win, especially for characters who are ill-served by what society serves up for them. In “Burial,” another fine story, a girl who is an outcast at school because she once tried to save a hummingbird is saved twice by tigers. Rubio is an extravagant storyteller; her prose thrums with life, and her plots take hairpin turns. All of this is on full display in “Maria, Maria,” a sweeping story that leaps backward and forward in time and from perspective to perspective as it traces the fates of three women all the way back to a mythic world. Except for a few of the more formally experimental stories (“Art Show” and “Paint by Numbers”) that fall flat, this is transporting work.

Sprawling magical realistic stories with a moral bent.