NOW I SURRENDER

A prismatic work of fiction about the last days of the Apaches.

Mexican novelist Enrigue specializes in complex tales about the legacy of New World colonization, especially the age of conquistadors (You Dreamed of Empires, 2024, etc.). Here he nudges the story forward to the 19th century, with what initially seems like a traditional Western yarn. The opening section, set in 1836, is set on what’s now the U.S.-Mexico border during the heart of a three-part conflict between Apaches, Mexicans, and Americans pushing westward. After a violent raid of the town of Janos, Apaches kidnap a young woman, Camila Ezguerra; José María Zuloaga, a Mexican army lieutenant colonel, is charged with assembling a posse to reclaim her. Enrigue sidesteps the typical adventure tropes of this setup, though; after a difficult transition into Apache society (raw animal innards prove an acquired taste), Camila comes to embrace her captors, and the story turns its focus on Apache leaders’ determination to endure despite facing a two-front war. Geronimo, the tribe’s powerful leader, claims much of the novel’s stage—the title comes from his finally surrendering to U.S. forces in 1886, ultimately sent to Fort Marion in Florida—and latter sections shuttle between scenes of Camila’s fate, Mexican and American authorities negotiating an end to the conflict, and Enrigue’s own present-day travels through the Apaches’ former territory: “an Atlantis, an in-between country.” As with Enrigue’s earlier books, he’s determined to upset narrative convention, and Wimmer, his longtime translator, handles his veering skillfully. Enrigue’s approach isn’t so much to lament the end of Apachería so much as to admire the steeliness of a tribe that survived centuries-long attempts to subdue it.

A curious but effective treatment of an underappreciated effort to resist imperialism.