DISCLOSURE: Amy Muia is a friend, which may make it impossible to provide a completely objective review of A Desert Between Two Seas. The fact that it is the winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction speaks for itself. Desert is not a travelogue about Baja California, Mexico. Yet the harsh 19th-century setting mirrors the desert in the hearts of the two main characters, who are surrounded by ruined Catholic missions that brought little light to an exploited native people. The book is identified as “a novel in stories” because each chapter is a story unto itself, but Amy managed to link the stories together like pearls on a necklace.
Amy is a fluent Spanish speaker and conducted extensive research. She spent time riding mules in the dust of Baja, collecting stories and absorbing the details of how a forbidding landscape shaped the lives of people in the desert. The book is an excellent read about fascinating and tragic characters who search for a better future in a land that clings to the past.