The Bullet Swallower with Elizabeth Gonzalez James!

We’re so excited to host first-time guest Elizabeth Gonzalez James! She will be in conversation with local friend Rachel Beanland in the store.

FREE REGISTRATION REQUIRED!

About the Book:

Based on (mostly) true events, The Bullet Swallower is a magical realism western about violence and revenge, a story that asks who pays for the sins of our ancestors, and whether it is possible to be better than our forebears. In 1895 Antonio Sonoro is a fearsome bandido who sets off from his home in northern Mexico to rob a train in Texas with his younger brother. But when the robbery goes awry and the two brothers land in the crosshairs of the Texas Rangers, Antonio is launched into a quest for revenge that endangers both his family, and his soul. In 1964 Jaime Sonoro, Antonio’s grandson, is Mexico’s favorite singing cowboy. But his comfortable life is disrupted when he discovers a book that purports to tell the entire history of his family beginning with Cain and Abel. Reading the book Jaime not only discovers the multitude of horrific crimes committed by his ancestors, but he realizes that these crimes have opened up a cosmic debt, and that he may be the next in line to repay it. A family saga that’s epic in scope but compact in form, The Bullet Swallower tackles border politics, intergenerational trauma, and the legacies of racism and colonialism in a lush setting and stunning prose that evokes Cormac McCarthy and Gabriel García Márquez.

About the Authors:

Elizabeth Gonzalez James is the author of the novels Mona at Sea and The Bullet Swallower, as well as the chapbook, Five Conversations About Peter Sellers. Her stories and essays have appeared in The Idaho Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Rumpus, StorySouth, PANK, and elsewhere, and have received numerous Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. She was Interviews Editor at The Rumpus, and a former contributor to Ploughshares Blog. Originally from South Texas, Elizabeth now lives with her family in Massachusetts.

Rachel Beanland is the author of two novels, The House Is On Fire (Simon & Schuster, 2023) and Florence Adler Swims Forever (Simon & Schuster, 2020). Beanland’s essays have appeared in Lit Hub, Business Insider, Creative Nonfiction, and Broad Street, among other places. She has benefitted from a fellowship at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Key West Literary Seminar, Hambidge Center, and Eastern Frontier Educational Foundation. Beanland attended the University of South Carolina and earned her MFA in creative writing from Virginia Commonwealth University. She lives in Richmond, Virginia where she is the 2023-24 Writer-in-Residence at University of Richmond.