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From This Wicked Patch of Dust
In the border shantytown of Ysleta, Mexican immigrants Pilar and Cuauhtémoc Martínez strive to teach their four children to forsake the drugs and gangs of their neighborhood. The family’s hardscrabble origins are just the beginning of this sweeping new novel from Sergio Troncoso.
Spanning four decades, this is a story of a family’s struggle to become American and yet not be pulled apart by a maelstrom of cultural forces. As a young adult, daughter Julieta is disenchanted with Catholicism and converts to Islam. Youngest son Ismael, always the bookworm, is accepted to Harvard but feels out of place in the Northeast where he meets and marries a Jewish woman. The other boys—Marcos and Francisco—toil in their father’s old apartment buildings, serving as the cheap labor to fuel the family’s rise to the middle class. Over time, Francisco isolates himself in El Paso while Marcos eventually leaves to become a teacher, but then returns, struggling with a deep bitterness about his work and marriage. Through it all, Pilar clings to the idea of her family and tries to hold it together as her husband’s health begins to fail.
This backdrop is then shaken to its core by the historic events of 2001 in New York City. The aftermath sends shockwaves through this newly American family. Bitter conflicts erupt between siblings and the physical and cultural spaces between them threaten to tear them apart. Will their shared history and once-common dreams be enough to hold together a family from Ysleta, this wicked patch of dust?
Spanning four decades, this is a story of a family’s struggle to become American and yet not be pulled apart by a maelstrom of cultural forces. As a young adult, daughter Julieta is disenchanted with Catholicism and converts to Islam. Youngest son Ismael, always the bookworm, is accepted to Harvard but feels out of place in the Northeast where he meets and marries a Jewish woman. The other boys—Marcos and Francisco—toil in their father’s old apartment buildings, serving as the cheap labor to fuel the family’s rise to the middle class. Over time, Francisco isolates himself in El Paso while Marcos eventually leaves to become a teacher, but then returns, struggling with a deep bitterness about his work and marriage. Through it all, Pilar clings to the idea of her family and tries to hold it together as her husband’s health begins to fail.
This backdrop is then shaken to its core by the historic events of 2001 in New York City. The aftermath sends shockwaves through this newly American family. Bitter conflicts erupt between siblings and the physical and cultural spaces between them threaten to tear them apart. Will their shared history and once-common dreams be enough to hold together a family from Ysleta, this wicked patch of dust?
- GenresFiction
240 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2011
About the author
Sergio Troncoso
23 books105 followersSergio Troncoso is the author of Nobody's Pilgrims, A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son, The Last Tortilla and Other Stories, Crossing Borders: Personal Essays, The Nature of Truth and From This Wicked Patch of Dust; and as editor, Nepantla Familias: An Anthology of Mexican American Literature on Families in between Worlds and Our Lost Border: Essays on Life amid the Narco-Violence.
He often writes about the United States-Mexico border, working-class immigrants, families and fatherhood, crossing cultural, psychological, and philosophical borders, and the border beyond the border.
Troncoso teaches at the Yale Writers’ Workshop in New Haven, Connecticut. A past president of the Texas Institute of Letters, he has also served as a judge for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the New Letters Literary Awards in the Essay category. His work has appeared in Pleiades, Texas Highways, CNN Opinion, Houston Chronicle, Other Voices, New Letters, Yale Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Texas Monthly.
The son of Mexican immigrants, Troncoso was born and grew up on the east side of El Paso, Texas in rural Ysleta. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and received two graduate degrees in international relations and philosophy from Yale University.
A Fulbright scholar, Troncoso was inducted into the Hispanic Scholarship Fund’s Alumni Hall of Fame, Texas Institute of Letters, and Texas Literary Hall of Fame. He was named a Fellow of the Texas Institute of Letters, the first Mexican American writer to receive this distinction.
Among the numerous literary awards Troncoso has won are the Kay Cattarulla Award for Best Short Story, Premio Aztlan Literary Prize, Gold Medal for Best Novel-Adventure or Drama from International Latino Book Awards, Bronze Award for Anthologies from Independent Publisher Book Awards, Gold Medal for Best Collection of Short Stories from International Latino Book Awards, Southwest Book Award, Bronze Award for Essays from ForeWord Reviews, and the Silver Award for Multicultural Adult Fiction from ForeWord Reviews.
The El Paso City Council voted unanimously to rename the public library branch in Ysleta as the Sergio Troncoso Branch Library.
His literary papers are archived at The Wittliff Collections in San Marcos, Texas.
Nobody's Pilgrims
"Eloquent, bold, and terrifying."
-Elizabeth Crook, author of The Which Way Tree
---------
Nepantla Familias: An Anthology of Mexican American Literature on Families in between Worlds:
"A deeply meaningful collection that navigates important nuances of identity."
-Kirkus Reviews, starred review
---------
A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son:
“It's his most powerful work yet, and an essential addition to the Latinx canon."
-The Texas Observer
---------
From This Wicked Patch of Dust:
“Troncoso’s novel is an engaging literary achievement.”
-Kirkus Reviews, starred review
----------
Crossing Borders: Personal Essays:
“We owe it to ourselves to read, savor and read them again.”
-The El Paso Times
----------
The Nature of Truth:
“Impressively lucid.”
-The Chicago Tribune
----------
The Last Tortilla and Other Stories:
“Enthusiastically recommended.”
-Booklist
----------
Our Lost Border: Essays on Life amid the Narco-Violence
“An eye-opening collection of essays.”
-Publishers Weekly
He often writes about the United States-Mexico border, working-class immigrants, families and fatherhood, crossing cultural, psychological, and philosophical borders, and the border beyond the border.
Troncoso teaches at the Yale Writers’ Workshop in New Haven, Connecticut. A past president of the Texas Institute of Letters, he has also served as a judge for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the New Letters Literary Awards in the Essay category. His work has appeared in Pleiades, Texas Highways, CNN Opinion, Houston Chronicle, Other Voices, New Letters, Yale Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Texas Monthly.
The son of Mexican immigrants, Troncoso was born and grew up on the east side of El Paso, Texas in rural Ysleta. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and received two graduate degrees in international relations and philosophy from Yale University.
A Fulbright scholar, Troncoso was inducted into the Hispanic Scholarship Fund’s Alumni Hall of Fame, Texas Institute of Letters, and Texas Literary Hall of Fame. He was named a Fellow of the Texas Institute of Letters, the first Mexican American writer to receive this distinction.
Among the numerous literary awards Troncoso has won are the Kay Cattarulla Award for Best Short Story, Premio Aztlan Literary Prize, Gold Medal for Best Novel-Adventure or Drama from International Latino Book Awards, Bronze Award for Anthologies from Independent Publisher Book Awards, Gold Medal for Best Collection of Short Stories from International Latino Book Awards, Southwest Book Award, Bronze Award for Essays from ForeWord Reviews, and the Silver Award for Multicultural Adult Fiction from ForeWord Reviews.
The El Paso City Council voted unanimously to rename the public library branch in Ysleta as the Sergio Troncoso Branch Library.
His literary papers are archived at The Wittliff Collections in San Marcos, Texas.
Nobody's Pilgrims
"Eloquent, bold, and terrifying."
-Elizabeth Crook, author of The Which Way Tree
---------
Nepantla Familias: An Anthology of Mexican American Literature on Families in between Worlds:
"A deeply meaningful collection that navigates important nuances of identity."
-Kirkus Reviews, starred review
---------
A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant's Son:
“It's his most powerful work yet, and an essential addition to the Latinx canon."
-The Texas Observer
---------
From This Wicked Patch of Dust:
“Troncoso’s novel is an engaging literary achievement.”
-Kirkus Reviews, starred review
----------
Crossing Borders: Personal Essays:
“We owe it to ourselves to read, savor and read them again.”
-The El Paso Times
----------
The Nature of Truth:
“Impressively lucid.”
-The Chicago Tribune
----------
The Last Tortilla and Other Stories:
“Enthusiastically recommended.”
-Booklist
----------
Our Lost Border: Essays on Life amid the Narco-Violence
“An eye-opening collection of essays.”
-Publishers Weekly
Ratings & Reviews
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Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
December 21, 2014
A gripping novel about the experiences of a Mexican American family in New Mexico from the 60's to the new century. Each chapter is a POV of a family member although most of the chapters are devoted to the daughter Julieta and youngest son Ismael. As a Latina I enjoyed the various Spanish phrases scattered throughout the dialogue, which gave a sense of familiarity and realism to the characters. However, for non Spanish speaking readers, many parts of the dialogue will find this frustrating, especially in one of the last chapters where a letter is written entirely in Spanish by one of the brothers.
November 4, 2020
This was one of the first novels in the literary canon I read and I found it moving, powerful, and packed with emotions and truths. The story at times almost reads like nonfiction, and I love the genuineness of many of the scenes and imageries. It's a story that follows a Mexican-American family that's sandwiched between cultures and linguistics both geographically and emotionally, and what's unique about it is that the characters of the parents feel very three-dimensional, their joys, their preoccupations, I can relate to immensely. Also, it's quite interesting that the siblings in the family, though having grown up together, end up in totally different places economically, intellectually, culturally, and religiously at the end of the story. It's a masterful piece that's both very healing and enjoyable to read anywhere, any time, but especially on a quiet evening.
August 21, 2015
I originally read this book before using it in a summer course about reading and writing. I loved it, and my students loved it! The family in the story is easy to fall in love with and easy to be frustrated with - just like anyone's family. Although their experiences are unique, they are at the same time easy to connect with, and the story pulls you along. By the time we were only halfway through the book, my students were already talking about the characters as if they were people we knew!
March 30, 2012
Thoroughly enjoyed Troncoso's novel and admired the ambitious and sweeping story.
January 27, 2013
Absolutely loved this story! I highly recommend it, for our high school students, ESOL teachers, & politicians.
December 13, 2014
Without murder, mayhem, or supernatural powers Sergio Troncoso tells a compelling story about family, cultural identity, and honoring traditions.
January 2, 2017
From the Wicked Patch of Dust is a real treasure with richness in detail and emotion. It is a story both fictitious while entirely plausible. The plot, themes and characters resonant with the reader for authenticity and dynamism.
The book centers around four children who grow up on the Texas-Mexico border, Pancho struggles with weight and his shyness(I personally identify with Pancho most). Ishmael struggles with loneliness and feelings of failure despite earning degrees from Harvard and Yale. He faces racist and classist taunts from his wealthy Jewish in-laws. Marcos struggles with dissatisfaction in his marriage and engages in extra-marital relationships, and oldest child Julia is sucked into radically liberal politics while in college and from there converts to Islam. Julia has the most strained relationship with her mother. Powerful forces in American society-racism, islamophobia, classism, war, radicalism, politics, fear, loneliness, self-hatred, and angst tear apart this pious, hardworking family from a small wicked patch of dust just north of Mexico. Marco's death at the end to me signifies the malignancy of it all.
The book is about crossing borders whether they are racial, spiritual, linguistic, etc and leaving behind an old world for a new one. Although the parents physically cross the border to reach El Paso from Mexico and children go off to break down other barriers and carve out brand new identities independent from simply being Mexican-Americans.
Humble immigrants Pilar and Cuauhtémoc, like many immigrant families, desire better prospects for their family but not without sacrifice, hatred and death.
The book centers around four children who grow up on the Texas-Mexico border, Pancho struggles with weight and his shyness(I personally identify with Pancho most). Ishmael struggles with loneliness and feelings of failure despite earning degrees from Harvard and Yale. He faces racist and classist taunts from his wealthy Jewish in-laws. Marcos struggles with dissatisfaction in his marriage and engages in extra-marital relationships, and oldest child Julia is sucked into radically liberal politics while in college and from there converts to Islam. Julia has the most strained relationship with her mother. Powerful forces in American society-racism, islamophobia, classism, war, radicalism, politics, fear, loneliness, self-hatred, and angst tear apart this pious, hardworking family from a small wicked patch of dust just north of Mexico. Marco's death at the end to me signifies the malignancy of it all.
The book is about crossing borders whether they are racial, spiritual, linguistic, etc and leaving behind an old world for a new one. Although the parents physically cross the border to reach El Paso from Mexico and children go off to break down other barriers and carve out brand new identities independent from simply being Mexican-Americans.
Humble immigrants Pilar and Cuauhtémoc, like many immigrant families, desire better prospects for their family but not without sacrifice, hatred and death.
July 8, 2020
I love the prose in From This Wicked Patch of Dust. The story follows a family in a realistic mode and it doesn’t get much grander or smaller than these characters trying to make in the world and deal with inter-familial issues that at times pushes up against larger issues of independence, feminism, and social justice as it is set in the 60s onward in the Southwest. Mexican values and ways come at odds with American values and ways and gets resolved in characters. I got drawn in the narrative—it’s all well written and comes off almost as a memoir. The verisimilitude of all the characters is pretty amazing—I got a great context for different generations from their point of view. This book for me wasn’t a flashy hash out who we are as in many literary books, but a witnessing of where we have been and how we acted, how we lived. That’s to say From This Wicked Patch of Dust feels intimate and the struggles of the family feels the same.
One of the characters at the very end points out what the books is about and what should draw anyone to read it:
“Then maybe someone will read it, and think about his family, and how much love they had a long time ago, and how to recreate it, how to fight for it, even if they begin in la nada like we did…”
One of the characters at the very end points out what the books is about and what should draw anyone to read it:
“Then maybe someone will read it, and think about his family, and how much love they had a long time ago, and how to recreate it, how to fight for it, even if they begin in la nada like we did…”
March 7, 2013
I really enjoyed this book. I was definitely confused at first and thought there were a lot more kids than there were, because they all had two names! I thought the characters were very well developed throughout this short but intense book. It shows the difficulties of families from one culture, living in another, and how parents really cannot know how their kids will turn out. I liked how Spanish was used throughout because it added to the authenticity of the conversations, but how I wish there had been a glossary in the back! I could work out most of it, but somebody with no Spanish might be turned off by not having some translation somewhere. I would have given the book five stars if there had been a glossary.
February 12, 2013
Mr. Troncoso has created a story where not only the characters come to life, but where the reader finds himself able to relate to the struggles the Martinez family faces. This book crosses the borders of race and religion while taking the reader through a roller coaster of emotions. It is easy to realize that no matter how different from one another we are, our families and their love is all that matters at the end of the day. Great Book!
May 2, 2018
I thought it was a very well written book. I enjoyed the story and will definitely recommend it to others.
December 28, 2013
Enjoyed reading this local El Paso author who came through on a book tour. The writing is semi-autobiographic, and tells many individual stories, within the frame work of one family, and how they grow and change. Good book discussion choice.
August 30, 2014
Interesting premise but not a well developed novel and simplistically written
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews