Perpetual West

August 1, 2021

In this new work by Maren, author of the coruscating debut novel Sugar Run, newly married Alex and Elana move from small-town Virginia to El Paso. Mexican-born Alex was adopted by white American Pentecostal parents and regularly crosses over to Ju�rez. There he learns more about his heritage while continuing his graduate studies in sociology partly by learning about Mexican professional wrestling, "lucha libre." Meanwhile, Elana is less happy with her courses at the local university, and she doesn't know that Alex has fallen in love with a lucha libre fighter. And then Alex disappears. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

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October 11, 2021
Maren’s meticulously observed sophomore effort (after Sugar Run) is a quasi-thriller about life on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. In 2005, 21-year-old Elana and her husband, Alex, move from Virginia to El Paso, Tex., where Alex is a sociology grad student. Alex, who was born in Mexico and adopted by Pentecostal missionaries from West Virginia, is drawn to his native country and, along with Elana, spends time exploring Juarez. There, he meets Mateo, a lucha libre wrestler to whom he is sexually attracted. When Elana flies east for a family emergency, Alex takes off with Mateo to visit Mateo’s hometown of Creel. Then, after Elana returns to El Paso, Alex is nowhere to be found, and she discovers he left his cellphone behind. Following a single clue—an ATM withdrawal from Creel—Elana sets out in search of Alex. Meanwhile, he and Mateo have been kidnapped by the nephew of a narcotraficante, who demands the wrestler compete for him. The ending feels a bit abrupt, but the author does an expert job of showing Elana and Alex’s separate arcs, and their story dramatizes border life in a nonclichéd fashion. It adds up to an admirable if imperfect vehicle for examining the gulf between the two countries’ cultures and people.

December 1, 2021
A sheltered young couple from Virginia move to El Paso to explore Mexico's culture and get in over their heads. Alex Walker was a promising history student when he married his professor's daughter, Elana Orenstein. He enrolls in a graduate program in El Paso, Texas, driven to understand his birth and abandonment in Ju�rez, Chihuahua, before he was adopted by a White missionary family to be raised in West Virginia. Elana goes along and enrolls in an undergraduate program in El Paso because going along is what she does--she's bright but unfocused. After they've been in Texas for a few months, drifting apart emotionally, Elana flies home to see her family, and Alex heads into Mexico with his new lover, the beautiful Mateo, a professional wrestler. Their passionate trip turns into a nightmare when the gangsters who run the wrestling operation come after Mateo. Elana comes home to discover Alex missing without a trace; she has no inkling of his relationship with Mateo. Already struggling with anorexia and worried about her younger brother's addiction problems, she spins into a desperate search for her husband, with sections of the book about her efforts alternating with what's happening to Alex and Mateo. There is some lovely prose in the novel despite its tone, which goes from bleak to bleaker. But aside from some spurts of suspense, its pace is slow, and although its characters sometimes interrogate U.S. stereotypes about Mexico, the book itself falls into them. The story of two American intellectuals in Mexico swerves into thriller territory but bogs down.

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December 1, 2021

In this follow-up to her auspicious debut, Sugar Run, Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize winner Maren offers a layered look at issues of identity via young married couple Alex and Elana, who have moved from small-town Virginia to El Paso. Mexican-born Alex, who was adopted at a young age by a conservative Christian couple in the United States, regularly travels across the border to Ju�rez to learn more about his heritage while researching a graduate school thesis on Mexican professional wrestling, or lucha libre. College student Elana becomes disaffected, an outsider to Alex's personal journey and desperate not to define herself in terms of him: "It was about having him not be a part of the mold around her, the form to fit her in." After a visit to her family, Elana returns home to discover that Alex is missing. She learns that Alex has fallen in love with a lucha libre fighter and landed in a dangerous situation that ends in a scary ride for him, his lover Mateo, and Maren's readers. VERDICT Maren's richly rendered work is distinctive in its exploration of multiple issues of identity at once, teasing out an understanding of pressing cultural, sexual, and personal conundrums with characters who remain consistent and relatable even as they are in the throes of redefining themselves.--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

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Starred review from December 1, 2021
Mexican American Alex Walker wasn't the first academic to cross from El Paso to Ju�rez to immerse himself in Mexican culture for the sake of his doctoral thesis, but his curiosity about lucha libre spiraled into an immersion that his wildest dreams or darkest nightmares never could have predicted. Alex and Mateo, a famous luchador, are violently taken hostage by a cartel boss hoping to grow his own wrestling empire. While Mateo is flown around the country and forced to perform for the cartel boss, Alex is trapped without money, identification, or any way to contact the outside world. When Elana, Alex's wife, returns home from a trip to find her husband missing, a convoluted and confusing search begins. Diving deep into the already fractured relationship between Alex and Elana, Maren (Sugar Run, 2019) has both narrate their triumphs, their fears, and their revelations of the cruelty and beauty of the world around them. Maren employs a sweeping and lyrical narrative voice reminiscent of Sharon Harrigan, Jeffrey Eugenides, and Paulette Jiles and isn't afraid to let readers sit with the discomfort of addiction, deception, and loss. Immersing readers in areas of Mexico not often seen and peppered with academic inquiries, Perpetual West is nothing short of haunting.

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