Twelve years ago,

Mateo Xavier Manuel Rodriguez Aguerra–Veracruz wandered across the border from New Mexico with dreams of exploring the world but got no further than Ciudad Juárez. Known as Penco—the orphan—he paints and contemplates the stories of his lost childhood. He has only recently started working as a bus driver and while his friends consider his new job an insult to his art, making the rounds of the city begins to work a change in him.

ISBN 978-0-9911215-2-6
February 2014
$14.75 paperback

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eISBN: 978-0-9911215-5-7
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Originally from South Bend, Indiana, Ann McGlinn graduated from Indiana University and received her master's in fine arts from the University of Montana. She lived in both the Chama Valley of Northern New Mexico and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, where she absorbed the smells and colors and music of the region that she brings to life in El Penco. She now lives with her family in Chicago, where she teaches at the Latin School of Chicago.



Lush, lyrical, and vibrant . . . if James Salter had travelled to Mexico, this is the novel he might have written.

— Amanda Eyre Ward, author of Close Your Eyes

A vivid, beautifully crafted story that stays with you like the night's last dream.

— Deirdre McNamer, author of Red Rover