King Juba’s Chest

King Juba’s Chest is a thundering, spellbinding, globetrotting American saga on the raw and dirty side of the tracks. From Juárez, the City of Dead Girls, an improbable young illegal Mexican immigrant eludes the spray of bullets from the ruthless Zetas cartel, claws her way through the choking dust of a collapsing smuggler’s tunnel, survives the ICE raids of the rat-infested colonias of New Mexico and the abusive blows of a carjacking, paint-sniffing boyfriend in Amarillo, finally, rising up from the ashes of poverty to become the CEO of a major American corporation. Yet, all is not what it appears to be. In the dark corridors of her mind is a secret place, a horrible place where prisoners of desperation abound and unwieldy miracles take flight. The cost of each visit is astronomical and nonnegotiable. The ultimate life-and-death exchange rate is hidden in the seams of an invisible world as ancient mysteries unfold. This is James A. Michener on steroids, a sweeping tale of the miscegenation of cultures and the undeniable quest to scale the purple mountains and alabaster cities in the land of the free. (A new experience in multicultural reading.)