You can read a new excerpt of Forest of Fortune in the latest issue of The Collagist. The excerpt features three sections. The first draws from the framing device that provides the novel with its historical context.

They spirited us away to the mountains, costumed in the skins of animals. They powdered our flesh until we resembled the ghosts we were fated to become. The men were savage, the women cruel. Their ways were not our ways. I understood before Ysabella there was no going back to the life we knew before. The pain we’d endured at the orphanage was nothing compared to this. Each night we prayed for our rescue, and every day our suffering continued. We were captives, trophies of war.

The second section comes from Lupita, a gambler who is haunted by the circumstances surrounding her husband’s death:

On the morning she got the news that Alejandro had been killed by friendly fire at a military checkpoint, a hawk alighted on the picnic table in her backyard, a jackrabbit twitching in its talons. Lupita watched in horror as the hawk tore the thing to pieces. To be in love is to be tormented: You’re either the rabbit or the hawk. She moved back to San Diego the next week.

And finally there’s Alice, an Indian who works at Thunderclap Casino. 

From the platform Alice could see the entire Forest of Fortune. It was all so astonishingly ugly. Everywhere she looked she saw wires and trestles and supports for signage. The slot machines were big, garish boxes, their candles protruding like nipples and caked with grime. How disappointing it was to see things as they really were.

Many thanks to all the editors at The Collagist, Gabriel Blackwell in particular, for publishing my work in their sharp and smart-looking magazine.