Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.

Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

Lambda Literary Award, Lambda Literary
PEN / Faulkner Award for Fiction, PEN / Faulkner Foundation
Stonewall Books Award Honor, American Library Association (ALA)

Sometimes the border is a mirror, sometimes it's an escape, and sometimes it's just the bridge you cross to go home.

All borders entangle those who live on either side, resulting in many a tale. Take, for instance, these seven evocative stories coming out of the Kentucky Club on Avenida Juárez two blocks south of the Rio Grande. It's a touchstone for all who walk by or go in for a drink or to score. The border on which it sits is really no border at all. Like all special watering holes, it is a liminal space, undefined and unclaimed. It welcomes Spanish and English, Mexicans and gringos, poor and rich, gay and straight, drug addicts and drunks, laughter and sadness, and even despair. It's a place of rich history and good drinks and cold beer and a long, polished mahogany bar. Some days it smells like piss. "I'm going home to the other side," folks say. That's a strange statement, but you hear it all the time at the Kentucky Club.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

  • Formats

  • Languages

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      September 24, 2012
      Sáenz's moving collection of short stories hinges on the intergenerational clientele of the titular borderland watering hole just south of the U.S.-Mexican divide on Avenida Juárez. In "The Rule Maker," a bilingual boy raised by his single mother in Juarez reflects on his childhood, being abandoned by his mother, and how he wound up across the border in El Paso with his previously estranged American father. Years later, before the boy departs for Georgetown University, he and his father grab their passports and head south for a drink "where your mother and I used to go." In "Sometimes the Rain," newly minted high school friends Ernesto and Brian drive down for a night out at the Kentucky Club and discover a bond neither of them expected, but one that would change them forever. As a prose stylist, Sáenz tends toward the melodramatic, but there's much to enjoy in these gritty, heartfelt stories.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

Languages

  • English

Loading