Manuel Munoz's dazzling second collection finds the author returning, once again, to the small towns of California's Central Valley. Set in a neighborhood with characters whose lives often intersect with each other, "The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue" offers ten stories about a wide range of lives: a mother coping with a mortally injured son after his motorcycle accident; a single father returning from San Francisco and attempting a reconciliation with an estranged sister; a young woman trying to provide safe haven to her cousin fleeing a vicious boyfriend; and, a teenager who sees himself in the trials of the town's most-gossiped-about resident. How these characters cross paths reveal a neighborhood shaped by misunderstandings and long-held secrets, and show how a community can be both embracing and unforgiving, revealing a truth about the nature of home: you always live with its history. Stories from "The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue" were previously published in "Epoch", "Glimmer Train" (marking Manuel's third appearance in this literary journal), "Rush Hour", and "Swink". His work has appeared in many other journals, including "The Massachusetts Review", "The Colorado Review", "Boston Review", and "Puerto del Sol", and has also been broadcast on National Public Radio's "Selected Shorts".
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
In a series of ten interconnected stories, Manuel Muñoz illuminates the lives of several Mexican-American families in the same neighborhood in Central California. The title story comes last in the collection, and is perhaps the most poignant. Twenty-one-year-old Emilio works the graveyard shift in a paper mill. One night, after a few shots of whiskey and a few hits of marijuana, he goes back to the forklift to move a pallet of paper, loses control and drops the whole load on himself. He is crippled for life, living at home with his father, who is at the end of his rope with caring for him. He puts Emilio in the car and drives him to a faith healer in Fresno. After giving her his life savings, she gives Emilio a tiny baby food jar of cream and tells him to rub it on his legs. "He watched as his father smoothed the crema onto his thin legs... not being thrifty with it as they had been with everything else in life, rubbing hard with belief..."
In these stories, sometimes belief is all there is: belief that a better job will come, that the loved one will return love, that a surly teenager headed for trouble will straighten out, that a gay son will change--faith and hope are staples of these people's lives. For the most part, they are disappointed. Most of the stories are of single mothers or fathers trying to raise families under the shadow of immigration and language problems and too little money. The subtext of many of the stories is homosexuality, not a lifestyle embraced by the Mexican-American community.
Muñoz writes with a sure hand of the way these people cross paths in unpredictable ways, in situations where there is never enough love or forgiveness. These are hard stories, sad and beautiful in their truth and clarity. --Valerie Ryan --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Munoz delivers another book of short stories colored by the heat of California's Central Valley and shot through with despair and a hint of magic. Following his debut, Zigzagger, these 10 interconnected tales are filled with characters living lives of isolation, alienated both from one another and the mainstream culture. Much of what happens is waiting and watching: a young gay man envies the glamorous life of his neighbor in "The Comeuppance of Lupe Rivera"; a young woman waits for her runaway cousin at a bus station in "The Heart Finds Its Own Conclusion"; and a mother waits for her only son's death after a motorcycle crash in "Lindo y Querido." The title story sees a young man robbed of his strength and promise when an industrial accident leaves him in the care of his overburdened father, whose hope lies in the promise of a faith healer. Munoz writes with restraint and without pretension, giving fearless voice to personal tragedies. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful Contradictions,
By
This review is from: The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue (Paperback)
Every writer has the power to rescue their troubled characters. Brave writers do not. Manuel Munoz is a brave writer. This is a collection of stories that honors the idea that in our lived lives we are not the sole authors of our respective destinies. Here, the rewards handed out for goodness, and the punishments for transgression, are appropriately capricious and true to life. In remarkable stories like "Tell Him About Brother John," Munoz uses precise and purposeful language to explore the sometimes painful contradictions between what his characters desire and what life will deliver them. It is the deft delivery of these contradictions which sets THE FAITH HEALER OF OLIVE AVENUE apart as truly fine achievement. In the above mentioned story, for example, the title character offers a breathless and heartbreaking confession, only to be cut off by the story's narrator, who tells us he "learned long ago to keep things simple. Don't tell much. Don't tell everything. Don't reveal what people don't need to or want to know." Thankfully, even with reluctant characters such as this, Munoz finds surprising and moving ways to show humans truly being.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Absorbing and Resonant Tales of Neighbors and Alienation,
By Jon J. Warren "jjnca" (LA, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue (Paperback)
These ten superbly written stories are set within the homes of "Gold Street" and the Mexican-American neighborhood of Central California, a community that both embraces and shuns its cultural past and fellow residents. Grief, loss, alienation, abandonment and accidents haunt all of these stories and characters -- husbands leave wives and families, women fight with their neighbors or don't speak to them at all for years and years, young men struggle with their sexuality and only find their future within their pasts. The opening story, "Lindo y Querido," is a heartbreaking account of an immigrant maid, aged and isolated from her neighbors, who uncovers her teenaged son's secrets while cleaning his bedroom after his death from a motorcycle accident. Many of these stories deal with familiar gay themes in extraordinary ways. In "Bring Brang Brung," one of the collection's finest tales, a gay widower and a reluctant father, returns to the neighborhood with his young adopted son and finds an unexpected ally in his sister. In "Ida y Vuelta," a man returns home for a short visit when his father becomes ill, bringing along his new lover while staying with the man he left after a fifteen-year relationship. In "The Comeuppance of Lupe Rivera," a young gay man is drawn into to the glamour and tragedy of his scandalous neighbor. Munoz's prose is controlled and poignant and I seldom wanted to step away from any of these stories -- the author's characters' struggles resonate because these events could happen in any neighborhood. My favorite story, "Tell Him About Brother John," finds two men, friends from teens, reunited, with one man offering up a confession of his life, while the other choses to continue to keep his life secret.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
superb stories,
By reidmc (St. Paul. MN) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue (Paperback)
These stories are poignant and extremely well-written. They are brilliantly interrelated and sequenced to heighten emotional impact. I don't read quite enough to offer an authoritative opinion, but outside of acknowledged masters of the form (Cheever, Updike, Munro etc.) I can't recall a more consistent and satisfying collection.
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