Jillian in the Borderlands

Alvarado’s mesmerizing if uneven collection of linked stories (after the essay collection Anxious Attachments) follows Jillian Guzmán, a mute Mexican-American child-psychic; her white mother, Angie O’Malley; and her aunt Glenda on a series of travels as they seek spiritual direction and healing. Jillian’s hallucinatory childhood in San Francisco and Arizona is peopled by dead child brides, ghosts, and even a “channeling Chihuahua,” all of which she documents in prophetic drawings that only her mother and their maid can interpret. After Glenda suffers a near fatal motorcycle accident in Denver, the family drives from Arizona to visit her in the hospital. While nine-year-old Jillian sits on Glenda’s hospital bed watching TV, she grunts and points at a healer named Juana of God when she’s featured on a show. Angie takes Jillian’s gesture as a sign that the healer could help Glenda, and drives the family to the desert city of Magdalena, Mexico, where their fates become entwined with the healer’s. Alvarado’s frequent shifts in perspective among the family members disrupt the novel’s flow, as does a change in focus to the plight of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border when Jillian is conscripted by Good Samaritans to help find those in need of water. While impassioned and immersive, the work’s various components just don’t quite cohere. (Oct.)

Correction: An earlier version of this review incorrectly stated the book is a novel.