carlos montoya–a novel (now available!)

from the inside flap:

The San Luis Valley of Colorado and New Mexico, the land of the church with the six-armed cross at La Garita, is the setting for the novel, Carlos Montoya. As author and mystic Frank Waters describes the six-armed-cross: 

• The cross is one of the oldest and most universal symbols known to man. The center point always has been profoundly significant. For if the four arms of the cross extending in opposite directions represent division and conflict, their point of intersection signifies reconciliation and unification. Regarded another way, the horizontal arms represent linear, secular time, the vertical arms represent durational, eternal time. At their intersection they merge into one unbroken timeless time. The center point, in effect, is the meeting point between the conscious and the unconscious.

Just as the arms of the Six-Armed Cross point toward one center, the Montoya family legacy melds the additional arms of incompatibility, intimacy, and multiple realities—the sensible and the mystical. Three generations of Montoya’s family must come to terms with brokenness–what it means for family, to be broken by lies and by truth. World War I veteran and family patriarch, Carlos Montoya wanders the llano of New Mexico and Colorado finding himself tormented by traveling ghosts and struggling for spiritual and family unity. 

Award-winning author John Paul Jaramillo, who was raised in eastern Colorado, continues the exploration of his familial and cultural roots in this multi-generational novel, a project first introduced in his acclaimed story collection The House of Order (2012) and extended via his powerful debut novel Little Mocos (2017). Carlos Montoya probes many of the same themes as these earlier works, but with even greater depth and sensitivity.

quotes:

“Chronicler of hard and valuable lives. This is a career to watch.” —Tracy Daugherty, author of One Day the Wind Changed

“Beautiful– cinematic yet intimate. I love how the book moves in ripples out from the man to wider context of history and family experience. Each chapter opens the door onto a whole other court of memory.”—Jennifer C.Cornell, author of Departures

book trailer:

excerpt:

Over dinner, my crimson-haired aunt Lena sat and told stories over bowls of green chile and mugs of sugary coffee. “My poor Papa Carlos,” she said. “God rest his soul.”

This was all right before my mother ran off, when my aunt cooked and cared for me, and before I found myself living in Lena’s neighborhood.

“Mean old bastard,” my mother said. She stabbed and scraped at every dirty plate from the kitchen table and then wiped down the counters. 

“Shame on you!” my Tia answered. “Don’t say such things to the boy! He needs to know about his people!” Then she tamped out her latest cigarette. And before lighting another, she advised us to locate family for ourselves. To always look for family for ourselves. 

“He’s dead and gone,” my mother said, exasperated. 

My aunt shook her head and threw up her hands. “Your father was a builder and a soldier. In the villages of the San Luis Valley. The man is there. That is where you can find him. The place of his birth.”

“We buried him at Roselawn. Don’t you remember?” my mother said. “Nothing left of him. House out on Franklin Street burned down and ashes. The man is in the ground!”

“No,” Lena said. “He’s there!”

My mother held her hand to her forehead. She said, “You’re scaring me. Can’t you see what’s real no more? That’s fool as all hell.”

When it was just me and my aunt sitting close again and whispering, she nestled her ancient and leathery hand into mine. “Promise me,” Lena insisted until I finally nodded and smiled. “Good boy, mi hijo. You go see about my father.”

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author bio:
John Paul Jaramillo’s stories have appeared in numerous publications, including the Acentos Review, Palabra, A Magazine of Chicano and Latino Literary Art and Somos en Escrito. He is the author of the story collection The House of Order, which was named a 2013 Int’l Latino Book Award Finalist, and the novel in stories Little Mocos from Twelve Winters Press. In 2013 Latino Boom: An Anthology of U.S. Latino Literature listed Jaramillo as one of its Top 10 New Latino Authors to Watch and Read.

contact: 

5250 Shepherd Road / Dept. of English and Humanities / Lincoln Land Community College / Springfield, IL 62796 / 217-786-2897 /  john.jaramillo@llcc.edu /twitter /