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“1,001 nights in a Mexicali women’s prison . . . González and Daughter Trucking Co. is about our compulsion to make events into stories and stories into bridges of understanding.”—John Sayles, Screenwriter and Director
Serving a sentence in a prison in Mexico, Libertad González finds a clever way to pass the time with the weekly Library Club, reading to her fellow inmates from whatever books she can find in the prison’s meager supply. The story that emerges, though, has nothing to do with the words printed on the pages. She tells of a former literature professor and fugitive of the Mexican government who reinvents himself as a trucker in the United States. There he falls in love with a wild woman with whom he shares his truck and his life—that is until Joaquín González unexpectedly finds himself alone on the road with a baby girl and González & Daughter Trucking Co. is born. Joaquín and his daughter make the cab of an 18-wheeler their home, sharing everything—adventures, books, truck-stop chow, and memories of the girl’s mother—until one day the girl grows into a woman, and a chance encounter with one man causes her to rebel against another.
With her stories, Libertad enthralls a group of female prisoners every bit as eccentric as the tales she tells. In González and Daughter Trucking Co., bestselling author María Amparo Escandón seamlessly blends together these elements into one compelling and unexpected conclusion that will have you cheering for Libertad and filled with joy.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
April 19, 2005 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780307336996
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780307336996
- File size: 1371 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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May 15, 2005
From the author of " Esperanza's Box of Saints" (1999) comes this semi-surreal tale of Libertad Gonzalez, imprisoned in the Mexicali Penal Institute for Women. The jail has a decidedly looser environment than its name implies--one of the wealthier inmates has transformed the yard into a beachfront--and model prisoner Libertad decides to start a book club. No matter what book she chooses to read aloud from, though, she always has the same story to tell. In " telenovela" fashion, complete with cliff-hanging chapter endings, she tells her increasingly large audience a story about a former literature professor and fugitive from the Mexican government who becomes a truck driver in the U.S and his loving but controlling relationship with his daughter. Libertad's audience grows hooked on the story line (much like Escandon's will), chiming in with heated opinions on the twists and turns of the plot. It soon becomes apparent that the story is Libertad's own, and it has become her way of making sense of her life and her crime. This highly readable novel is a paean both to storytelling and to freedom. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)
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