The Girl Who Cried Diamonds & Other Stories

In these 14 hard-edged and unapologetic stories, debut author Garcia tackles topics ranging from human trafficking and drug abuse to eating disorders and middle-age angst, and in no-frills prose, carves out bizarre and palpable realities, breathing strange life into a horde of depressed, deprived, and abused characters. The title story begins, “Once there was a girl who cried diamonds, who bled rubies, who pissed gold, and who shat onyx.” Leaving her “tiny pueblo” to follow her migrant brother, the girl is smuggled across an unnamed border and then is repeatedly sold, chained, and tortured for her precious excretions. “Mother,” another stark and disturbing tale, follows a serial killer through the eyes of his young daughter who believes that each woman her father abducts, rapes, and murders is her mother. In “A Golden Light,” for which Garcia won an O. Henry award, an adolescent girl, traumatized by the death of her father, mistakes a flickering beam of light for his spirit. The longest and strangest tale, “Woman into Cloud,” follows a middle-aged wife and mother who escapes from her body by turning into a cloud. Sometimes the stories feel sparse or constrained, and too often Garcia leaves characters stranded and meanings obscured. Still, readers with a taste for the darker side will admire Garcia’s cool reserve and the dismal worlds she conjures. (Oct.)