Santa Fe joins Phoenix as a riveting Southwest US installment in the Akashic Noir series.
"There is a real charm to the local specificity of Santa Fe Noir, and it's a pleasure to discover how different imaginations can channel the chiaroscuro energy of well-known places." (Santa Fe Reporter)
"Because each story is identified by the neighborhood or specific location in which it takes place, Santa Fe Noir is a veritable road map of the city and surrounding area. It stretches from El Dorado to the Southside, Casa Solana and Cerrillos Road to the Santa Fe National Forest. The protagonists of the stories are psychotherapists, vagrants, teenagers, and gig workers. They drink and smoke. They drop acid and have sex. And more than a few are guilty of murder (or at least of justifiable homicide)." (Pasatiempo)
"If you picture Santa Fe, New Mexico, only as a sunny, vibrant, colorful Southwest arts mecca, this anthology will shred that image with feral claws." (Roundup Magazine)
Brand-new stories by: Ana Castillo, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Byron F. Aspaas, Barbara Robidoux, Elizabeth Lee, Ana June, Israel Francisco Haros Lopez, Ariel Gore, Darryl Lorenzo Wellington, Candace Walsh, Hida Viloria, Cornelia Read, Miriam Sagan, James Reich, Kevin Atkinson, Katie Johnson, and Tomas Moniz.
From the introduction by Ariel Gore:
The stories in this collection reflect a fundamental truth about this city: history depends on who's telling it. Too often the story of Santa Fe has been told only by the conquerors and the tourism PR firms. In Santa Fe Noir, you will hear the voices of the others: locals and Native people, unemployed veterans and queer transplants, the homeless and the paroled-to-here. When I asked the contributors you'll hear if they had a Santa Fe story to tell, they invariably shrugged and said something to the effect of, "Oh, I've got a story all right. But it might not fit the image of Santa Fe you're looking for".
I said, "Try me". They came back with the stories that never make the glossy tour brochures: the working class and the underground, the decolonized and the ever-haunted; the Santa Fe only we know.... Conquered and reconquered, colonized and commodified, Santa Fe understands - from historical genocide to the murders of family members - the intimacy of violence.
