This wonderful collection of stories, set in a migrant work camp in California, circa 1975, was a joy to read. Gordo, an over-weight Mexican boy, possibly gay is at the center of most of these tales. He is smart and curious but is also taunted and bullied, as he struggles to find his place in the world. A great look at immigrant life in Steinbeck country. This is Cortez’s first shot at fiction and he really nails it. ( )

Jaime Cortez's Gordo is one of those titles that keeps providing more rewards as readers work their way through it. The individual stories are varied, engaging, distressing, hopeful. But these stories add up to something larger. In a sense, these stories are a novel—one that takes readers through many shifts of perspective and that requires readers' assistance in pulling it into a whole. And I mean this in a good way.

Imagine a photo of a place. Cut that photo into pieces, discarding a few, but keeping most. Then use those pieces to create a mobile. Watch the pieces as they move in relation to one another, as different bits come into proximity. Ask yourself questions about the handful of pieces that are missing. That's what reading Gordo is like. And I mean that in a very good way.

The characters in Gordo are residents of the agricultural lands that make up California's Central Coast: agricultural workers and their children; documented and undocumented; kind and unkind; gay, straight, and questioning. Each story offers exactly the sort of detail and precision that readers need. Cortez creates complex characters and situations without every writing with unnecessary complexity. And, as I said above, the rewards keep coming as the stories inform one another. The further I got in Gordo, the harder it was to put the book down and the more I had to fight to keep myself from racing through stories to see what was still to come.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own. ( )