Tijuana Straits: A Novel

Tijuana Straits: A Novel
by Kem Nunn

Tijuana Straits: A Novel
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Book Summary Information

Author: Kem Nunn
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2005-10-04
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Scribner

Book Reviews of Tijuana Straits: A Novel

Book Review: Beyond The Aegis of Surfer Noir - A Haunting Tale of the Human Condition
Summary: 5 Stars

Kem Nunn infuses this story with unusually haunting description and metaphor that often seems more like poetry than prose. It's far more than a surfer story though I guess if that's what you're looking for you'll find that as well. Nunn's skill with language winding unique provocative imagery into a romantic and dark tale that interlaces social issues, landscape and complex characters so well that I was somehow carried much deeper into the currents of my own soul then I expected from a mystery/thriller. Nunn shows the seedy side of the Southern California outback, that being a denizen of Southern Cali, I have viewed from the distance of a car window on my way to someplace more glamorous and which I admit I also viewed with a vague disdain; as the world of white trailer trash amidst the desert or some backwater. This story opened my eyes to the possibility that what lies beneath the surface of that world can be far more deep and complex and reveals universal aspects of the human condition. Certainly it's true for the characters, plot and themes he created in this moving work. I cared about all characters and even felt a strange sympathy for the villains' plight. It's a very rare that a mystery/ thriller leaves me weeping when I close the book. I can't really pin down why it moved me that way, but it did. Its "heavy" in great way.

Summary of Tijuana Straits: A Novel

From Kem Nunn, the National Book Award-nominated author of Tapping the Source and The Dogs of Winter, comes an exquisitely written tale of loss and redemption. Nunn renders the dangerous beaches and waters of California's borderland as only the critically acclaimed poet laureate of surf noir can, and Tijuana Straits confirms his reputation as a master of suspense and a novelist of the first rank.

When Fahey, once a great surfer, now a reclusive ex-con, meets Magdalena, she is running from a pack of wild dogs along the ragged wasteland where California and Mexico meet the Pacific Ocean -- a spot once known to the men who rode its giant waves as the Tijuana Straits. Magdalena has barely survived an attack that forced her to flee Tijuana, and Fahey takes her in. That he is willing to do so runs contrary to his every instinct, for Fahey is done with the world, seeking little more than solitude from this all-but-forgotten corner of the Golden State. Nor is Fahey a stranger to the lawless ways of the border. He worries that in sheltering this woman he may not only be inviting further entanglements but may be placing them both at risk. In this, he is not wrong.

An environmental activist, Magdalena has become engaged in the struggle for the health and rights of the thousands of peasants streaming from Mexico's enervated heartland to work in the maquilladoras -- the foreign-owned factories that line her country's border, polluting its air and fouling its rivers. It is a risky contest. Danger can come from many directions, from government officials paid to preserve the status quo to thugs hired to intimidate reformers.

As Magdalena and Fahey become closer, Magdalena tries to discover who is out to get her, attempting to reconstruct the events that delivered her, battered and confused, into Fahey's strange yet oddly seductive world. She examines every lead, never guessing the truth. For into this no-man's-land between two countries comes a trio of killers led by Armando Santoya, a man beset by personal tragedy, an aberration born of the very conditions Magdalena has dedicated her life to fight against, yet who in the throes of his own drug-fueled confusions has marked her for death. And so will Fahey be put to the test, in a final duel on the beaches of his Tijuana Straits.

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