Just as the arms of the Six-Armed Cross point toward one center, the Montoya family legacy melds incompatibility, intimacy, and multiple realities—the sensible and the mystical. Three generations of the Montoya family must come to terms with brokenness and with what it means for a 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, tormented by traveling ghosts and struggling for spiritual and family unity.

Southern Colorado is home to “little mocos” Manito and his cousin Bea, both curious and sensitive, both tragically doomed and longing to live anywhere else. United in their agreement to escape onion fields and Ortiz family ghosts, the two stumble into their teen years with a stubborn brand of bad decisions and petty crimes.

Against the cold and gray backdrop of the looming steel mill, Manito and Bea eventually piece together the unbending reality of their multigenerational family trauma, including an unanticipated close connection to local murderer Raymond “Cornbread” Vigil.

The first collection of composite stories by John Paul Jaramillo presents a stark vision of American childhood and family. Set in Southern Colorado and Northern New Mexico, Manito’s only access to his lost family’s story is his uncle, the unreliable Neto Ortiz.

Manito sorts family truth from legend as broken as the steel industry and the rusting vehicles that line Spruce Street.