CAST AWAY

In the early 1920s, Veronica Chavez, the daughter of a fisherman, falls in love with an American poet visiting her seaside village in Mexico.

She becomes pregnant with his child, and together they leave Mexico for his home in Seattle. It’s not just Jason’s shabby apartment that shatters Veronica’s naïve romantic fantasies of life with an American man. Her lover proves abusive and unfaithful. Though isolated in a country where she doesn’t speak the language, Veronica finds the courage to flee again. It’s a heady time to be in the United States, especially the Western part of the country. Immigration policies are in flux, and while opportunities abound, so do perils. The same is true of the 1990s, when teenage Chuy arrives in Salt Lake City to live with his great-aunt Veronica, now in her 80s. Chuy, his mother, his older brother, and his father—who had been living in the U.S. for years to finance their family’s migration—do their best to build a life in Utah, but it’s not easy. They live in a predominantly white Mormon community and under the watchful eye of law enforcement. One pastime that helps them cope with life’s stresses is watching a reality TV competition called Cast Away. Chuy believes that if he trains hard enough, gets on the show, and wins the $1 million prize, he can secure his family’s future. The novel alternates between Chuy’s coming-of-age in the 1990s and Veronica’s in the 1920s with humor and warmth. The tone is charming even as the book tackles challenging themes around family, grief, home, and heartache. The two timelines, the protagonists of different genders, and Johnstun’s attention to the details of Utah’s unique landscape and milieu make the novel feel greater than the sum of its parts.

An intergenerational story that interrogates and celebrates the American dream.