Blood Relations - A Novel (Paperback)

This is the story of Refugio, whose family has worked in the mines of Northern Mexico for generations. His grandfather dies of silicosis, while his father is reduced to part-time work, but Refugio plans to follow in their footsteps. He takes it as rejection when his brother, Antonio, refuses to let him enter the mines. Then Antonio, too, begins spitting blood, and once more the pageantry of flowers and a black casket repeats itself. Refugio has been saved, but only to know the agony of watching helpless as the one who sacrificed himself slowly wastes away. To read this book is to know the daily round of the miners, which runs to such trivia as cigarettes, sex, sleep, food, money, and a sort of divine communion which occurs in the silence before a last.