The Bullet Swallower

The first time I read Gabriel García Márquez in the eighth grade he completely changed the way I think about language—his sentences had magic and played by their own rules! So when I saw that The Bullet Swallower was being compared to García Márquez, I was a little skeptical. But when I began reading this impressive, genre-defying epic, I happily discovered it is worthy of the comparison.

The Bullet Swallower takes us from the late 1800s to the 1960s, across Mexico and Texas, following the no-holds-barred vigilante Antonio Sonoro and his more law-abiding grandson Jaime. After a train heist turns deadly and Antonio’s brother Hugo is killed, he will stop at nothing to avenge his death. 70 years in the future, grandson Jaime feels the reverberations of Antonio’s violence, and a haunting figure from the past convinces him that he’s the only person who can atone for his family’s sins.

Reading this book is a visceral experience; you can feel the crunch of gravel under your feet, the blazing hot sun beating down, the sand and silt and dirt coating your whole body as you journey with Antonio across the desert. The Bullet Swallower blends the swagger and stakes of a western, the well-researched details of a historical novel, and a dash of magical realism into something beautifully indescribable and wholly unique. If you’re looking for a transportive read, this is it.

In 1895, Antonio Sonoro is the latest in a long line of ruthless men. He’s good with his gun and is drawn to trouble but he’s also out of money and out of options. A drought has ravaged the town of Dorado, Mexico, where he lives with his wife and children, and so when he hears about a train laden with gold and other treasures, he sets off for Houston to rob it—with his younger brother Hugo in tow. But when the heist goes awry and Hugo is killed by the Texas Rangers, Antonio finds himself launched into a quest for revenge that endangers not only his life and his family, but his eternal soul.

In 1964, Jaime Sonoro is Mexico’s most renowned actor and singer. 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. In its ancient pages, Jaime learns about the multitude of horrific crimes committed by his ancestors. And when the same mysterious figure from Antonio’s timeline shows up in Mexico City, Jaime realizes that he may be the one who has to pay for his ancestors’ crimes, unless he can discover the true story of his grandfather Antonio, the legendary bandido El Tragabalas, The Bullet Swallower.

A family saga that’s epic in scope and magical in its blood, and based loosely on the author’s own great-grandfather, The Bullet Swallower tackles border politics, intergenerational trauma, and the legacies of racism and colonialism in a lush setting and stunning prose that asks who pays for the sins of our ancestors, and whether it is possible to be better than our forebears.