more on mile zero
"A magnificent tapestry. Sanchez forges a new world vision, rich in the cultural and literary intertextuality of Steinbeck and Cervantes."
-Los Angeles Times
"Dazzling...a comic masterpiece crackling with backhanded wit, bursting with vital characters, its brilliantly contrived plot uncoils with the suspense of a thriller."
-New York Times
Thomas Sanchez, author of RABBIT BOSS
("The Indian experience of the last 120 years, a size and scope that is
awesome." Los Angeles Times), has created a novel of daring virtuosity
and powerful impact. MILE ZERO displays an extraordinary force of vision,
heralded in the novel's opening evocation of a space shuttle hurtling
toward new frontiers while fearful refugees flee across the Caribbean,
bound for haven in the Untied States.
"Mile zero" marks the location of Key West--the island that defines
the end of the American road, the meeting of the Atlantic with the
Gulf of Mexico, the cultural junction where Anglo-Saxon, Latin and
African worlds collide. The island is a sanctuary for St. Cloud, an
American expatriated in his own country; a passionate activist in the
1960s, he is now a fugitive from the unresolved anguish of his
generation, unable to rekindle the ideals of youth.
In Key West, St. Cloud crosses path with three people whose
paradoxical presence forces him to re-engage with life: Voltaire,
a teen-aged Haitian refugee accused of murder; Lila, a secretive
young Southern woman desperate to free herself from the spell of
the renegade Vietnam vet called MK; and Justo, a Cuban-American
cop who understands the island's cruel legacy of slave trade and
Latin revolution, and its complex and explosive present, punctuated
by marijuana millionaires, threadbare illegal immigrants, proud
homosexuals, and hard-luck treasure hunters.
Chronicling St. Cloud's dangerous reawakening, MILE ZERO charts an
exotic journey through a labyrinthine world of tropical treachery,
through displays of amazing courage and integrity. As St. Cloud and
Lila slip obsessively into a sensual embrace of redemption, Voltaire
plunges into a modern nightmare and Justo becomes ensnared in a
"voodoo-Santeria" killing, threatening to undo forever the island's
uneasy balance between its pirate past and space-age future. The
interlocking lives illuminate the inward and outward tumult of our
time, in a huge and profoundly felt novel.
