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A dazzling magical realism western in the vein of Cormac McCarthy meets Gabriel García Márquez, The Bullet Swallower follows a Mexican bandido as he sets off for Texas to save his family, only to encounter a mysterious figure who has come, finally, to collect a cosmic debt generations in the making.
In 1895, Antonio Sonoro is the latest in a long line of ruthless men. He's good with his gun and is drawn to trouble but he's also out of money and out of options. A drought has ravaged the town of Dorado, Mexico, where he lives with his wife and children, and so when he hears about a train laden with gold and other treasures, he sets off for Houston to rob it—with his younger brother Hugo in tow. But when the heist goes awry and Hugo is killed by the Texas Rangers, Antonio finds himself launched into a quest for revenge that endangers not only his life and his family, but his eternal soul.
In 1964, Jaime Sonoro is Mexico's most renowned actor and singer. But his comfortable life is disrupted when he discovers a book that purports to tell the entire history of his family beginning with Cain and Abel. In its ancient pages, Jaime learns about the multitude of horrific crimes committed by his ancestors. And when the same mysterious figure from Antonio's timeline shows up in Mexico City, Jaime realizes that he may be the one who has to pay for his ancestors' crimes, unless he can discover the true story of his grandfather Antonio, the legendary bandido El Tragabalas, The Bullet Swallower.
A family saga that's epic in scope and magical in its blood, and based loosely on the author's own great-grandfather, The Bullet Swallower tackles border politics, intergenerational trauma, and the legacies of racism and colonialism in a lush setting and stunning prose that asks who pays for the sins of our ancestors, and whether it is possible to be better than our forebears.
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Is a son responsible for the sins of his father? Is it possible to escape your family's legacy, and can one ever truly right the wrongs of the past? Through evocative text and looping timelines, The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James asks readers these questions in the form of a redemption story that is frightening and fulfilling in equal measure.
The Bullet Swallower is a tale of a cursed family, the Sonoros, who are responsible for all manner of evil deeds over the span of centuries. It centers on Antonio Sonoro, El Tragabalas ("the bullet swallower"), who is loosely based on the author's great-grandfather, and Jaime Sonoro, the fictional Antonio's grandson.
Antonio's story takes place in the mid-1890s when, as a drinker and gambler, barely eking out a living for his family in rural Mexico, he goes for a major score via a train robbery in southern Texas. The heist fails, and in the melee his brother is killed by the Texas Rangers, while Antonio himself suffers a grievous wound that results in his menacing nickname. His brother's death sends him on a quest for vengeance across dusty Texas plains and sun-baked Mexican deserts, crisscrossing the Rio Grande while pursuing the killers and avoiding a similar fate for himself.
Interspersed with Antonio's storyline is that of Jaime, a popular Mexican actor in the mid-1960s. He knows nothing of his family's past until he finds a strange book chronicling their entire sordid history. As the author hops back and forth between these stories, a shadowy figure hangs over both characters and draws the thread between their tales.
Antonio's adventures are part spaghetti Western and part Don Quixote, with a dash of magical realism mixed in. He faces impossible odds in shoot-out after shoot-out as he chases his tormentors, the Texas Rangers (see Beyond the Book), and fixates on his own version of Dulcinea, his long-suffering wife, Jesusa.
He even has his Sancho Panza — an aristocratic English sidekick named Peter, who happens to be a perfect shot. This character feels a little too improbable in the rural borderlands between Mexico and the U.S. in 1895, but his consistently cheerful dialogue and sunny disposition — in contrast to Antonio's pathos — bring much-needed levity to the narrative.
Both hunter and hunted, Antonio's quest pulls him through Wild West towns, barren landscapes and ominous bodies of water described in dreamlike tones, with pictures and coloring muted and unclear, then suddenly fiery and up close: "the black shore twisted with vines and mesquite trees, fallen limbs that reached out of the water like hands. The scream came again and this time Antonio saw the white body of a barn owl stark against the night sky." Wherever Antonio goes, colonial aggression, poverty and mistreatment of Mexican citizens are plain to see.
Meanwhile, as he learns more about his family's past, Jaime becomes enveloped by the curse of the Sonoros. The shadowy figure, Remedio, appears as a guest in Jaime's home and seems to bring misfortune with him, but his role in the Sonoros's fate is unclear. Is he causing the curse? Protecting them from it? Gonzalez James doesn't answer those questions, but Remedio's arrival leads Jaime to understand he must tell the story of El Tragabalas to absolve not just his grandfather, but himself and his entire family.
Despite the cruelty and discrimination that both Antonio and Jaime see all around them, they learn to make sacrifices for the greater good. The resolution is a relief — the reader can feel the family's burden being lifted — but Gonzalez James is wise enough not to sugarcoat the ending or cast anyone as a simplistic hero.
The Bullet Swallower is magical realism lite — a good introduction before a reader jumps into something like Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, for example. It leaves one with a lingering sense of foreboding and questions about what was real and what was imagined. Gonzales James's leaps of logic are just fantastical enough without becoming completely untethered from her story's historical settings.
Aside from the elements of fantasy, however, the novel closes with a sense of cautious hope that we actually can overcome even the worst legacies, and perhaps leave this world just a little better than we found it.
Reviewed by Rose Rankin
Kelli Jo Ford, Plimpton Prize-winning author of Crooked Hallelujah
Mary Pauline Lowry, author of The Roxy Letters
Xochitl Gonzalez, New York Times bestselling author of Olga Dies Dreaming
Rated 5 out of 5
by Janine S
As one reviewer wrote of this book: "Mesmerizing and important" and indeed this book is. Based loosely on the author's great-grandfather, who she writes in the Author's Note, was "a bandido in the late 1800s, the book tells the story of the "notorious" Sonoro family - a fictitious family of legendary bad men. Antonio Sonoro is a bad man, a man from a long line of legendary bad men. We meet him in 1895 at the time of a terrible drought, planning a train heist. He has been a terrible husband and father but he is determined to somehow make things better by the train robbery - visions of gold, unsurpassed wealth spur him on. So, he and his brother, Hugo, travel to Texas where everything goes wrong and they are then pursued by the Texas Rangers, several of whom are bent on the destruction of all Mexicans, whether good or bad!
At one time Antonio is shot in the face and acquires his nickname: El Tragabalas ("The Bullet Swallower"). Fast forward to 1964 where we meet El Tragabalas's great grandson, Jaime Sonoro, a Mexican movie star beloved in his country, who is given a mysterious book purposing to show how the vile Sonoro family is responsible for all evil in the world. As the book alternates between 1895 and 1964, a story unfolds showing how Antonio is desirous of revenge but also wanting to repent his ways while Jaime is struggling to understand his past and what it means for him, his father and his children. The question grows: are the sins of the father put upon the children? Throughout these periods of time, a "shadow" seems to pursue both men. Who is this "shadow"? Can one redeem himself?
The book is masterfully written - there are some of the most delicious and beautiful descriptions of the terrain of the Texas and Mexican countryside where events take place -and the character of Antonio is stellar! The added dash of magical realism is not over drawn but adds to the tale creating some gothic elements too. While racism isn't a theme necessarily in the book, the story is riddled with it and the terrible impact racism has on Antonio and his family. This is not a long book but it's a wonderful read. Highly recommend.
In Elizabeth Gonzalez James's novel The Bullet Swallower, a group of Texas Rangers pursue the protagonist, Antonio Sonoro, with maniacal zeal. The most dangerous member of the posse tortures and murders innocent civilians as a warning to Sonoro, crossing the Rio Grande and attacking Mexican citizens with impunity. Set in the mid-1890s, the novel captures the brutality and extra-legal tactics often employed by the Texas Rangers, particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Founded in 1823 by Stephen F. Austin, the Texas Rangers — originally just a group of 10 men — spent their first decades fighting Native American tribes and Mexicans in the territory of Texas as white settlers arrived in greater numbers. They were officially established in 1835, just a year before Texas declared its independence from Mexico. When the Mexican-American War broke out in 1846, the Rangers acted as a kind of guerilla force, earning a fearsome reputation for violence, according to Doug Swanson's Cult of Glory: The Bold and Brutal History of the Texas Rangers.
Attacking Native Americans and Mexicans and bounty hunting those who escaped slavery constituted much of the Rangers' activities in the mid-19th century, despite later romanticized, whitewashed depictions of the Rangers in pop culture and Hollywood. Those depictions were driven in part by their participation in high-profile cases, such as foiling assassination attempts against President William Howard Taft and President Porfirio Diaz of Mexico in 1909. They were also responsible for killing the infamous Bonnie and Clyde in 1934.
Far less publicized, however, were Ranger atrocities such as the Porvenir massacre in 1918, where Rangers shot and killed more than a dozen innocent Mexican men and boys in the small village of Porvenir as revenge for a nearby raid, despite no evidence linking Porvenir residents to the earlier violence. The Rangers' captain at the time resigned over the incident, but no Rangers were punished or otherwise held accountable.
The Texas Rangers were briefly disbanded during the Great Depression, a mix of cost-cutting and political vendetta after they supported the losing side in a state election. But in 1935, they were reconstituted as part of the Texas Highway Patrol, with their new organization largely staying the same to the present day.
From TV shows like The Lone Ranger and Walker, Texas Ranger to countless Hollywood Westerns, the Texas Rangers were sanitized to appear as a righteous, brave citizen militia, and their violence against non-white populations was largely ignored for many years. As historians and novelists like Gonzales James bring more information to light, that narrative is finally under increasing scrutiny.
Terry's Texas Ranger Monument in front of Texas State Capitol, courtesy of Texas State Preservation Board
Filed under People, Eras & Events
By Rose Rankin
A major new novel set in nineteenth-century New Orleans by the author of Signs Preceding the End of the World.
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