Camanchaca

On a near-silent drive across a desert with his father, a teenage boy puzzles out the mysteries of his family and himself in this acclaimed novel. As a fifteen-year-old boy takes a long drive across Chile's Atacama desert with his father in a smoke-colored Ford Ranger, the teen simultaneously traverses "e;the worn-out puzzle"e; of his broken family-his corrosive intimacy with his mother, the obtrusive cheer of his absentee father, his uncle's unexplained death. A low fog called camanchaca pushes in from the sea, its moisture sustaining near-barren landscape. Sometimes, the silences are what bind us. In this "e;arresting and deeply affecting read"e; (Publishers Weekly), Zuniga is "e;following in the footsteps of fellow Chilean Roberto Bolano"e; (Minnesota Star-Tribune). "e;It's precisely this coolly observant language, deepening with the story, that lets us register the buried despair."e; -Library Journal "e;A smart, straightforward narrative that reveals the varied mood a shared experience can evoke."e; -Kirkus Reviews "e;Camanchaca has one of the strongest novel openings I've read in years, a knockout vignette that disarms the reader with a few beats of unnecessarily specific detail, and then seamlessly shifts into fast and steady motion while glancing across a violent mystery all in just a quarter of a page."e; -Electric Literature