Guatemalan Rhapsody

Lemus debuts with an assured collection in which Guatemalan characters reckon with past traumas and pursue new opportunities. In “A Cleansing,” the unnamed narrator runs a laundry business out of his house and takes in a young woman named Gloria after she’s kicked out of a convent. When customers complain of missing clothes, the narrator suspects Gloria, then discovers a shocking truth while snooping among her belongings. “Caídas” follows Sergio, self-appointed caretaker of the waterfall and swimming hole where his brother drowned as a boy years earlier. More tragedy ensues after a visitor graffitis the site. In “Fight Sounds,” a man named Antonio is excited to work on a Hollywood film shoot when it sets up camp in his village, but the arrival of exotic foreign laborers and movie stars leads to some messy drama. The characters who have left Guatemala fare no better, among them two friends in the U.S. who practice drawing tattoos on each other in “Heart Sleeves,” hoping to land an apprenticeship at a parlor. Lemus probes his characters’ self-defeating tendencies without losing sight of the structural forces that constrain their choices. These bleak yet clear-eyed stories ache with life. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME. (Mar.)