This extremely well-packaged debut novel by Rick Collignon announces the arrival of a fantastic writer who should be watched closely in the future. MacMurray & Beck found another winner with Collignon and his tale of the town of Guadalupe, New Mexico.
The book is slight, probably 4 x 6 inches and just over 200
pages long to boot, but the story is huge. It is the story of family, and how
history can be used to remind us of how to live our lives today.
Collignon focuses on the Montoya family in The Journal
of Antonio Montoya. The tale
begins when little Jose Montoya loses his father and mother to an automobile
accident with a cow one August morning.
At the funeral, his mother sits up in her casket and tells his Aunt
Ramona that she would prefer that Ramona take care of little Jose, rather than
his Uncle Flavio and his wife Martha.
Ramona reacts to this event by telling Flavio her intentions
to take and raise Jose for her deceased brother and sister-in-law. She takes Jose through town and to her house,
where she encounters her grandfather Epolito Montoya—who has been dead for
some thirteen years at the time. Getting
past him at the door allows her to run into her deceased grandmother who offers
her food. It really isn't until little
Jose follows his grandfather out to irrigate the fields that the reader sees
that Ramona is not just hallucinating and that the dead have returned to the
scenes of the living.
The amazing thing about Collignon's story-telling abilities
is that once the reader realizes that everybody is seeing the dead, the idea no longer seems
preposterous at all, and the presence of any of them just flows along with all
of the other plotlines.
Ramona had left the little town of Guadalupe, going to a
bigger city and trying to make her way as an artist, a painter. She never truly
felt like she fit in with her parents or two brothers. It wasn't until some time after she returned
that she found her muse as an artist—the town of Guadalupe itself. She began to paint the town, piece by piece,
including a haunting scene of the cemetery engulfed in flames.
Jose's Uncle Flavio comes by, partially with the plan of taking Jose back
home to Martha—the two of them had not been able to have the children they had
always talked about raising, even with many years of unfettered
lovemaking. It isn't until he encounters
his grandparents that he even gets an inkling of why Ramona has taken the task
of raising Jose upon herself. He ends up
getting Martha to come over—she and Rose had always gotten along very well—and
going out to irrigate the field with Epolito and Jose.
Rose will have nothing to do with allowing Ramona to help
out around the house. She instead gives
her an old musty book to read—The
Journal of Antonio Montoya. In it,
Ramona reads the history of the town of Guadalupe from back when her distant
relative Antonio was a Santero—one who carved religious icons out of wood for
others to put in their homes.
It is through the history of Antonio and the town of
Guadalupe back in his day that Ramona pieces together how family interacts, how
some things that shouldn't, go unsaid, and vice versa. It is through the reading of this history
that she learns about herself, why she acts and reacts the way she does. What the history is capable of doing is
making Ramona realize that she has a purpose, and that she is not lost in life.
The book is a powerful little tale and extremely well
written. Collignon has a style that
makes the words dance along the page. It
is not due to action, not verbosity—it is just the style he employs that makes
the words such a treat to read along.
This debut is not to be missed.
Perdido
Originally published by MacMurray & Beck, paperback currently in print via
Unbridled Books
In Perdido,
Collignon returns to his fictional town of Guadalupe, New Mexico. While the Montoyas are present again, they
do not dominate the second novel like they did the first.
Collignon instead concentrates on Will Sawyer and the folks
that he associates with, specifically his business partner Felipe and Will's
girlfriend Lisa. Will has landed in Guadalupe through some sort of fate—he ran
out of gas one day and walked into town, finding an old abandoned house to take
over.
Will and Felipe do construction work together. Felipe is married with a few children while
Will is single. Will's girlfriend Lisa works as a waitress and lives in a
trailer at the back edge of her mother's homestead. Her hotheaded brother lives with her mother
still and is none too happy that she has taken up with Will, a non-Latino.
While they are going to another larger town for supplies one
day, Felipe mentions to Will that one day a young girl was found to have
committed suicide by hanging herself on the bridge they were about to cross. The story interests Will and he wants to know
more, so Felipe tells him to talk to an elderly gentleman who was around at the
time. After talking to him, Will learns
that a specific police officer was in charge of the investigation, and he was
still around. His name was Ray.
As soon as Will brings up the subject, Ray gets very defensive
and angry and threatening. Will
apologizes, not understanding how asking a simple question has caused this
amount of anger, and leaves. Later that night,
he is awakened as his house is lit by headlights. It is the car of Ray's nephew. As he and his buddies make a lot of commotion
and drink, Will gets angry and determines he wants to find out more about the
girl now.
The further he looks into the story, the angrier the people
in town get with him. Collignon does a
great job of allowing the reader to feel Will's frustration in the matter by
not getting into the heads of the townsfolk.
Instead, one is left with Will's thought process and is as confused as
he is about the anger being projected on him.
Collignon uses the people of Guadalupe well in this novel to
look at the feeling of displacement within a community. Will is never made to feel like he's one of
the community, and the incidents following his simple line of questioning don't
do anything to help out in that matter.
As he finds out more about the history of the incident, he
really never finds out the truth.
Collignon shows his confidence in his storytelling with the
fact that the incident that the main story revolves around—the death of the
girl—is not only an historical event, and it is never cleared up or explained; it just dangles there throughout the story.
Collignon is correct in his confidence however—the explanation
is not needed nor missed. As in his debut
effort, the writing is fantastic and further develops the dancing usage of the
English language established last time around.
The only thing missing is more involvement of the Montoyas—Collignon
did such a great job establishing their identities in his first Guadalupe novel
that it seems they should be a great part of any story told there.
A Santo in the Image of Cristobal Garcia
Originally published by BlueHen Books,
paperback currently in print via Unbridled Books
Collignon once again returns to his fictional town of Guadalupe,
New Mexico, with what appears to be a final visit. This time the Montoyas are the dominant
family in the story being told, just as in his Collignon's first effort.
This novel gives Collignon's readers a more thorough version
of the history of Guadalupe as a large portion of the book involves Flavio
Montoya, relating as he and his friend Felix used to listen to the last of the Garcia
family recall the events of the three founders of the small town. The story is a fascinating one that readers
will be more than content to hear Collignon's version as opposed to my recap of
it.
Collignon also gives his readers what appears to be the end
of the town's history as the entire town is engulfed in flames through much of
the novel. There is some confusion over
how the fire was started as Collignon continues a trait from his past novels of
jumping into a story after the initialization of an event and not actually
having that storyline complete before the end of the book.
He also brings back an element from his first novel—that of
the unreliable character. Where the
reader was fully aware that characters that were dead were very active in The Journal of Antonio Montoya, in this
effort we are treated to Flavio's dreaming and the fact that Felix is walking
around, even though he had a debilitating stroke within the last decade. Another
old friend of Flavio and Felix wanders towards the fire with only a shovel and
is consumed by the flames only to reappear at Flavio's sister Ramona's house
later on.
Collignon also returns to review his issues with the feeling
of displacement within a community. The non-Latino
Officer Oliver is virtually ignored by the townspeople while he is trying to
determine the cause of the fire and help get folks out to safety. In each of the three efforts, Collignon has
looked at this issue in a different manner, keeping it fresh.
Collignon is hitting on all cylinders with this effort—the
writing is fantastic and further develops the dancing usage of the English
language established in his first two novels.
In bringing back the Montoya family, he eliminates the only slight
complaint a reader might have had with Perdido,
and in telling the full history from beginning to end of Guadalupe, he gives
his readers everything they could ask for this time. As they were overlooked when they came out, try to find the first two novels first—this one works by itself, but it
would be a shame to not enjoy the town as it was meant to be.
(All three reviews originally written in 2002 and distributed via email from the Emerging Writers Network.)
Dan Wickett founded the Emerging Writers Network in 2000 and co-founded Dzanc Books in 2006 with Steven Gillis. He edited the short
story anthology Visiting Hours (Press 53) and has published a short story in
Quick Fiction.Buy Visiting Hours
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