Mexico

The characters in Josh Barkan's remarkable story collection Mexicoare ordinary people-everyday citizens, expats, and travelers visiting the country for their own reasons-who find themselves inexorably caught up in and impacted by the criminality and brutality of the Mexican cartels. In these pages readers will meet a tourist who is kidnapped off the street, a teacher whose students risk death if they fall in love with the wrong person, a chef who must cook for a gangster under pain of death, a plastic surgeon forced to alter a fugitive drug lord's appearance, and many more compelling and memorable characters suddenly thrust into harrowing, life-changing situations. But for all that the characters in Mexicohave their lives touched by crime, these are much more than simple ocrime stories.o Rather, they are complicated and deeply human tales that touch on universally recognizable themes such as a parent's desire to connect with their children, an idealistic belief in young love, and the struggle to maintain faith in a world full of hardship. Josh Barkan has a keen eye for detail and an authentic sense of place, polished over many years spent living in Mexico, and he brings this world to life with uncommon grace. As extreme as the events in these stories may be, they are always grounded in recognizable and relatable human characters. Readers will see themselves in these pages, which makes the unflinching portrait of drug violence all the more powerful.