STEAL MY HEART

Delightful debut novel about American innocents abroad (“a thief and two Peace Corps volunteers”) and the Guatemalans whose lives they inevitably change.

Ed and Rachel joined the Peace Corps to do good, but now they can’t quite make contact with the people they’re supposed to help. They’ve become lovers, know each other so well they almost don’t have to talk, and have great sex; things, in short, have become so easy between them that neither is quite sure that the relationship will last. Carlton, meanwhile, is a gloomy professional thief who left New York because he was just too good at robbing people and wasn’t sure what he thought about his bisexuality. Able to support himself in luxury anywhere in the world, he stopped wandering when he found a beautiful lakeside villa in the small Guatemalan town of Panajachel, where he now tries—unsuccessfully—to stop stealing. When Rosario, the beautiful native Indian woman who cleans his villa, discovers the source of his wealth, Carlton makes her his partner in crime. Living in the same town is Ramiro, a native Indian farmer who quit his job as detective because he disliked working for the perversely brutal Hispanic police who he felt were exploiting other Indians (now, he’s learning English from Ed). When Carlton cleans out the sleeping Ed and Rachel, Ramiro dusts off his detective skills but wonders whether he suspects Rosario because of anti-Indian prejudices he acquired from his former cops, or whether she’s truly involved with the thief. As his characters cross paths, former Peace Corpsman Brazaitis, whose The River of Lost Voices: Stories from Guatemala (not reviewed) won the 1998 Iowa Short Fiction Prize, wisely lets them meander through their loneliness and frustrations while feelings of alienation and uncertainty gradually change into mutual respect, gender-bending love, and selfless sacrifice.

A gently assured, low-key pastoral of lost souls who find, in banal evil and thwarted altruism, the inspiration for human kindness.