LITERANISTA Dialogue on Multicultural Books, Tech & Life

Literanista February 1, 2010

Patricia Engel’s “The Bridge” and Paul Theroux’s “Siamese Nights” are the latest stories published as part of the partnership between The Atlantic and Amazon.

Patricia Engel is the author of Vida, forthcoming from Grove/Atlantic in 2010. Her stories have received awards including the Boston Review Fiction Prize, a Florida Artist Fellowship in Literature, and distinctions from Narrative Magazine and Kore Press; her work has recently appeared in Guernica, Harpur Palate, Slice Magazine, Nimrod, Quarterly West, Fourteen Hills, and Sycamore Review, among other publications.

Patricia Engel is the author of Vida, forthcoming from Grove/Atlantic in 2010. Engel’s “The Bridge” is the story of Carlito and Reina, a brother and sister from Miami. When he was a boy, Carlito was thrown from a bridge by his distraught father. Saved by a fisherman, Carlito was treated with special care throughout his life: no one bothered him about school, about his manners, about beating up his sister.

Years later, when he found out his girlfriend was unfaithful, Carlito threw her baby off a bridge. Murder is Carlito’s inheritance, people say, and he is paying the price, languishing on death row at Florida’s South Glades Penitentiary. Only his sister, Reina, refuses to abandon him, visiting him every weekend to preserve his humanity, and to drive away her own terrible secret.

“The Bridge” combines the lyricism of a Gabriel García Márquez with the stripped-down realism of a Raymond Carver to produce a story that will sadden readers’ hearts while expanding their souls.

Two new Amazon Fiction on Kindle stories will appear at the beginning of each month. Readers can find these stories in the Kindle store as well as through the Kindle for iPhone and Kindle for PC apps, and planned Kindle platform expansions for Mac and Blackberry.