cover image THE TRUTH ABOUT ALICIA

THE TRUTH ABOUT ALICIA

Ana Consuelo Matiella, . . Univ. of Arizona, $23.95 (150pp) ISBN 978-0-8165-2163-0

Matiella explores the world of Hispanic women in this debut story collection, a gracefully written but uneven book in which the author shines in many of the longer stories but stumbles in some of the shorter ones. The successes are headed by "The Braid," the fascinating story of a woman who befriends a struggling young couple after she moves to Flagstaff to take a teaching job, only to discover that the boyfriend is a violent fugitive. He sets his sights and his temper on her when she visits his sick mother in Mexico and loses a braid of the old woman's hair. The title story takes a slightly more poignant turn when an unstable pregnant woman murders her unfaithful husband, only to find an unlikely rescuer: the Border Patrol cop who arrests her is a former classmate who gives her an opportunity to head south and escape prosecution. Several of the brief stories are underdeveloped, but Matiella has better luck with the animal humor in "Twice-Cooked Yorky," a quick interlude about the disparate fates of small dogs in Mexico and America, and "Rat Roulette," a tongue-in-cheek comedy about a Mexican family's efforts to get rid of rats nesting under their rented house in Santa Cruz. Several other stories offer illuminating insight into Hispanic lives, but the long-form material would seem to offer a more promising path for Matiella, a columnist for a Santa Fe newspaper who has several nonfiction titles on multicultural education to her credit. (Mar. 14)