And I’ll Take Out Your Eyes

Sosa debuts with a searing portrait of a Mexican American boy whose ill fortune might be attributed to a curse. In a somnambulant haze, seven-year-old Christian lops off his pinky finger and the tip of his ring finger in his family’s rodent-infested Stocton, Calif., apartment. His mother believes he was cursed when his aunt gave him the evil eye, so she performs a limpia, or cleansing, on him, and sends him to a curandero, or healer, whose treatment roils his digestive system. Christian’s family life is harrowing: his father is a violent alcoholic, his mother is depressed, and his older brother is increasingly distant. He barely survives his adolescence, which is marred by repeated beatings from his father, one of which ends in a broken arm. Later, while his mother battles late-stage cervical cancer, Christian spends his nights carousing the streets of Stockton with his crew. The novel wobbles near the end, when Sosa switches to a third-person POV to describe an older Christian’s mental health struggles, but the early sections astound with their vivid depictions of his childhood struggles. The prismatic nature of the narrative will please fans of Tomas Rivera’s classic novel y no se lo trago la tierra. Agent: Mina Hamedi, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Oct.)