ALL THESE DEEP ARROYOS by Matt Baca
9781639737758
1/26/27
Bloomsbury Publishing
Fiction / Hispanic & Latino / Family Life
Twins Robin and Cruz are separated as toddlers: the latter kept with casually violent parents, the former left with his abuelos in New Mexico’s desierto alto. Raised as a ranchero, Robin develops a sense of responsibility and grows up grounded in a landscape that rejects all but the hardiest attempts to establish roots. Meanwhile, Cruz misuses his charisma to acquire beer, girls, and dirty money; his path is set too early for Robin to save him during their brief adolescent reunions.
Robin shakes off Cruz’s influence in favor of following his love, Cristina, a girl from the Laguna Pueblo who dreams of the science she’ll innovate one day. Inspired by open skies and Cristina’s self-possessed diligence, Robin strives for more than survival and eventually thrives. He and Cristina make it to college, butting up against imposter syndrome and the reality of their toughening but sheltered upbringing.
Robin’s hope dries up after Cruz ropes him into a deadly scheme and outruns the consequences for seven years. Robin—innocent, honest, and convinced of the brightness of his future—is swatted down mercilessly by an uncaring criminal justice system, aptly renamed the “criminal legal system.”
A childhood friend once saved by Robin’s openheartedness and Cristina’s determination crusades in a legal gray area for Robin’s freedom. The search for a poor but more fitting form of justice and a return to love and life stretches across years of prison correspondence. A sprinting conclusion is made all the more satisfying by love that stays constant in contrast to the shifting desert landscape.
The novel tracks the twins through childhood, adolescence, and a stifling adulthood, remaining nonjudgmental as it depicts poverty without indignity. Baca’s rural romance cautiously inspires sympathy and helpless outrage but never tragedy or pity. His panoramic setting serves as a transporting, expansive contrast to a mysterious first-person perspective that plays the plot close to the vest. Though Cruz should be unlikable in contrast to the conscientious Robin, his selective morality and sacrifice make him a compelling part of the novel’s resolution.
The resonant title is an excellently developed metaphor for the cascading divergence and convergence of the boys’ fates, and this coming-of-age story is flooded with a significant sense of place. Upmarket and equally uplifting and heartbreaking, Baca’s debut novel is filled with afterimages that linger like sunburned retinas. These are characters you’ll hope for long after the last page!
The tender striving of In the Heights meets the poignant loss and injustice of The Fear of 13 in this DEMON COPPERHEAD-style novel of the American Southwest.
Happy reading!
<3 Jadyn
“This story of two brothers, of the different choices they make and the different lives they lead, kept me turning the pages right to the end. With great characters, a vivid sense of place, a compelling plot, and an assured narrative voice, this is a very impressive debut.” —Karen Joy Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB and BOOTH
“ALL THESE DEEP ARROYOS is the story of a secret America. Of the tender, willfully resilient children of the desert. In short, it’s a killer.” —Erika T. Wurth, author of WHITE HORSE
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