Late in life, Clayton Elliot faces long-deferred hard choices.
Circumstances force him to bury his recently deceased wife,
Adelita, in the little West Texas border town of Solitario instead of
next to their three-year-old daughter on their hardpan ranch. To
pay for Adelita's cancer treatments, Clayton sold this marginal
ranchland to water developers.
By reuniting Serafina with her mother in Solitario, Clayton
hopes to assuage his guilt about her death twenty-five years earlier.
However, whether Clayton moves Serafina immediately or ignores
the contracted deadline, either act will trigger drilling into the
aquifer for water. His lifelong friends are vehemently opposed to
drilling.
When a young Mexican woman mysteriously enters his life,
Clayton must delay his efforts to move Serafina and surreptitiously
help this woman who has illegally crossed into Texas. This
decision also raises the ire of Clayton's friends.
Throughout the novel, Clayton struggles with both the internal
and external borders of his life. And the eccentric characters of
Solitario find they, too, must confront their own geographical,
psychological, and racial boundaries.
_________________________________________________________
BOB CHERRY is an award-winning novelist and poet. His fourth
novel, Little Rains, set in the Big Bend country of Texas, was a
runner-up for the TCU Texas Book Award. It was also a finalist for
the Mountain and Plains Booksellers Association Adult Fiction
Award and was listed by the Denver Post as one of ten notable
books for 2003. A native Texan, Cherry writes from his ranch near
Cody, Wyoming. He returns frequently to West Texas.
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