El Puente/The Bridge

By Ito Romo

Book Overview

This tenderly wrought novel by a gifted new writer about a town on the Rio Grande resonates with pure border voices. Thirteen women--all ages and backgrounds--react in unexpected, humorous, and mysterious ways when one day the river suddenly turns crimson red. The bridge, which the women cross and re-cross in the course of this cycle of stories, becomes a site where the women acquire knowledge about their lives and their landscape as the mystery of the color of the river unravels. Romo illuminates a cross-section of border life in classic, lyrical prose, rich with elements of fable, ancient morality tales, and magic, all the while capturing the extraordinary textures of contemporary border life. El Puente/The Bridge captivates and entertains with its mix of closely observed reality imbued with deep spirituality.

A story cycle that bridges together, like a string of papel picado, the lives of several women on both sides of the Tex-Mex border. The world, according to Romo, is bizarre, troche moche, heartbreaking, rasquache, endlessly romantic, tender and touching. As funny as a fotonovela, triste as a telenovela and wild as any Fellini.--Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street and Woman Hollering Creek

Each voice of the women Romo has created blooms into a real life that we recognize immediately. He has created his own bridge between the seeming ordinariness of the women with an extraordinary event, beautifully told. We stand captivated in the presence of full human beings.--Helena Mar a Viramontes, author of The Moths and Under the Feet of Jesus

Ito Romo's El Puente/The Bridge will charm its readers--meaning both delight and enchant them. Thirteen women's lives are woven together into the story of a possible miracle, or perhaps it is a hoax, or maybe sabotage with political overtones. Like an old-fashioned folktale, this deceptively simple novel unfolds the secrets of a community. Ito Romo is our storyteller at the border, bridging two cultures and many lives with his first novel.--Julia Alvarez, author of How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Yo , and In The Name of Salome

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0826322530
• ISBN13: 9780826322531
• Release Date: June 2001
• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Length: 158 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.1" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Sweet, sad, beautiful, and thoroughly interconnected

Imagine Joyce's Dubliners set on the Rio Grande. Like life itself, this book is sweet, sad, beautiful, astonishingly interconnected, and all too short. When Tomasita burns the beans, she sets in motion a series of events that touches the lives of a dozen other women, and attracts the notice of millions. Romo employs a series of brief vignettes to tell powerful, emotion-packed stories of life and death and love and pain, and ties them all together into an exquisite package. Short, but delightful in its richness and complexity, this is a perfect gem of a novel, and one of few works of fiction this reviewer has read recently that didn't cry out to be edited down. All of the main characters are Mexican-American women, so women and Latinos may find this book especially endearing, but such is the power of Romo's achievement that this slim volume can readily be appreciated by everyone.

Stories of Real Humanity

"These stories are at once bittersweet, tender, and funny without ridiculing. We recognize ourselves or know someone in those shoes and they touch our hearts. We root for or pray along with them as they try to unravel the puzzle of their lives. Romo skillfully maintains and heightens the momentum and allure of the story with folkloric intrigue: how and why has the Rio Grande turned red?" -- Liz Raptis Picco, for El Andar.

"Weekly Alibi" review, 9/28/00

"Romo has a pleasing, unpretentious writing style, and he sometimes exhibits a real eye and ear for the ordinary moments that give life meaning. Throughout EL PUENTE, I was frequently reminded of John Steinbeck. Romo isn't as obsessed with social and economic justice, but he has a similar knack for describing the lives of plain, simple folk on the street.... EL PUENTE shows a lot of promise."--Steven Robert Allen