Embedded Files
by Juni Fisher
by Juni Fisher
North of the Mexican border, freedom has a price.
Teresa sells souvenirs and helps care for her father’s fighting roosters in Centro—the heart of Nogales. When Teresa’s mother receives a letter from a friend assuring haven from her troubled marriage, she takes twelve-year-old Teresa and her sisters north, into the bone littered Sonoran Desert where the most dangerous predators drive cars, rob desperate travelers of hope, and sell the naïve to the highest bidders.
Their hopes of a new life swept away by a storm, Teresa and her sisters can’t return to Mexico, so following a hand drawn map, they forge on through the wasteland.
Three decades earlier, unmarried mother, Ana leaves her job at the convent in Centro to cook for a wealthy couple who’ve promised a privileged existence in Arizona. Ana is lured into an unimaginable barter to support herself and her children.
In intertwined stories a generation apart, Ana and Teresa are catapulted into a morbid tale of corruption, deceit, and indoctrination where money and power write rules no one dares to question.
Girls from Centro yanks back a tangled tapestry to expose a maze of conflicting heroic and evil characters, murky secrets, skeletons, and sacrifice in a spell binding, unstoppable dash to a rewarding, and unforgettable finale.
“Juni Fisher has written a story as bold as breaking news headlines covering the tragic perils of hopeful, honest emigrants lost in border deserts in search of a better life in the United States. The reader will have to turn pages quickly to figure out and follow the maze of conflicting characters, both heroic and evil, in a spell-binding dash to the final five words. There is more than one dramatic movie in this book set in abusive American ranch lands, unholy Catholic orphanages and frightening cults of early day Mormonism.” — Warren Lerude, Pulitzer Prize-winning Journalist
“ . . . an engaging and fast-moving ride in the company of memorable characters, both good and bad, across a troubling social, cultural, historical and still timely landscape.” — Tom Strelich, New York Journal of Books
“These gripping parallel stories are straight up and honest to the bone. I found each character saturated with an authenticity I have rarely run across in border stories. Juni has a savage eye for sharp detail that kind of takes your breath away. It also kind of pisses me off, but that’s the envy talking.” — Bob Boze Bell, Author, Illustrator and Executive Editor, True West magazine
Details
Details
Bink Books
244 pp. ● 6x9
$19.95 (pb) ● $9.99 (eb)
ISBN 978-1-949290-94-3 (pb)
FICTION / Hispanic & Latino
FICTION / Cultural Heritage
Publication date: August 2022
“Juni Fisher’s superb tale of love, betrayal, tragedy, and triumph, though set in the recent past, is as vivid and relevant as today’s headlines from the Arizona border. Beautifully written and ingeniously structured, it is a slam-dunk winner.” — Ranger Doug Green, author and entertainer (Riders In the Sky)
“This may be Fisher’s debut novel, but this is not the last we will hear from her. Many people talk about writing a book “someday.” This talented author sat down and did it, and did it well. She is a powerful storyteller with an interesting twist of imagination. Readers from all walks of life will find something to love about those girls from Centro who are just trying to get by, trying to make a life. I look forward to having more Fisher books on my shelf.” — Amy M Hale, award-winning author of Rightful Place, Winter of Beauty, The Story Is the Thing, and Ordinary Skin: Essays from Willow Springs
“I was hooked on the six not-rhyming, but poetic, lines introducing Chapter 1 describing Nogales as having ‘one ample buttock on Arizona’ and ‘the other on Sonora.’ And, ‘the gateway rests between those fleshy parts.’ The pithy, vivid prose pictures hinting at the essence of each chapter are alone well worth the price. I don’t do tequila shots, but I imagine them being something like that. Getting to know the characters Fisher so skillfully creates is fun and disturbing and ultimately inspirational. I agree with the comparison to Handmaid’s Tale in another review.” — Dave Martin, Record Producer
“Chilling and compelling. I read the entire book in one sitting! A well written book that brings the border and the cultures on either side to life through prose and poetry. Life can be horrific on either side of the border, as the characters slowly discover, and there is a high price to pay for what appeared at first to be freedom. Juni Fisher has written a timely book and it is a must read for anyone watching the border crisis today.” — Marcia Matthieu
Juni Fisher is a multi-award-winning singer, songwriter, and producer, the IWMA Entertainer of the Year, four times Female Performer of the Year, (IWMA and AWA), four-time Song of the Year winner (IWMA and WWA), and two-time True West Magazine Best Solo Musician. She was the first woman to win the National Cowboy Museum’s Wrangler Award in 2009 for her CD, Gone for Colorado, which was also the 2009 IWMA Album of the year. Her songs been in feature film and documentary sound tracks and have been recorded by artists in folk and western music circles.
Before writing her first novel Girls From Centro, she was published in Equus Magazine, Trout Unlimited Newsreel, The Western Way, and True West Magazine.
Fisher splits her time between the outskirts of Nashville, Tennessee, and her hometown in Tulare County, in central California. When she’s on the west coast between concert tours, she rides and shows her cutting horse, nick-named Dee Jay.
And when she takes an incognito break from the road with husband Rusty, they head for places where waters run clear and cold, and trout rise to well tied flies. She has a wicked double haul cast and has been known to have to be coaxed and bribed out of the water at the end of the day. She is, after all, a Fisher.
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