Water from the Moon

What was it like to be a Mexican American youth growing up in a small copper mining town in Arizona? This collection of short stories written in the voices of those young people answers that question. It will not only captivate readers who are young adults but also those adults who are young at heart. Who can resist characters like Emilio and Gigante, who live on the fringe of Morenci social culture because they are different? Emilio was disfigured in a fire that killed his family and stunted his mental and physical growth and Gigante is so big that his job is to carry coffins from the church to the cemetery. In the title story, Margarita and Carmelita discover that maybe water can come from the moon. These and other intriguing characters in this collection are individuals whose lives are in transition and the stories are about how they deal with the changes. At the core of the stories is the knowledge that the town will eventually be destroyed by the ever expanding copper mine that provides most of the employment in the area. The author, Elena Díaz Björkquist gives us a wonderful insight into life in a mining town.