Overview

""Two friends two friends, how close could they get without being one man ... one in love with a ghost, the other ... longed for the son who'd more than likely already become a ghost."" Ruben Arenal, nicknamed Rocket by his close friends and family, and Ernesto Cisneros are longtime friends, as close as brothers, living in Mexico's northern state of Chihuahua. Ruben is a potter who lives alone in his studio apartment. Ernesto is married to Guadalupe and they have one son, Coyuco, who is training to be a teacher. Out of these bald facts spins magic. Ruben falls in love with an eerily lifelike mannequin in a shop window, widely rumored to be more flesh and bone than mere artifice and modelled on a local beauty nicknamed La Pascualita, who died young many decades ago. Ruben trails after her ghost while Ernesto leaves their hometown to go in search of his son, kidnapped and disappeared by the police while out on a student protest with forty-two of his comrades from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College.

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9781771835282

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Reviews

Set in the very recent past, Thirteen Heavens is a hypnotizing tale of corrupt politics, brutal violence, and all-too-human drama. For all of its quiet brutality, the narrative is infused with an entrancing, dreamlike mix of Mexican folklore, popular song and poetry. At the novel's very heart lies the porosity of the boundary between this life and the next. It is a book like no other and, once begun, it is very hard to put down. Once put down, it is very hard to forget. -- Richard Aronowitz, author of An American Decade and Life Lessons

Author Information

Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1954, Mark Fishman has lived and worked in Paris since 1995. His short stories have appeared in a number of literary magazines such as theChicago Review, Carolina Quarterly, Black Warrior Review, Mississippi Review, Frank (Paris), and The Literary Review. He was the English-language editor ofThe Purple Journal(Paris) andLes Cahiers Purple(Lisbon). He is the author of two previous novels:The Magic Dogs of San VicenteandNo. 22 Pleasure City.

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