Welcome to Happy, Texas—a small Panhandle town with a name that doesn’t always ring true.
Discontent is brewing in Happy as Brother Bob questions his beliefs as pastor of a church. Jen, his choir director, flounders in her unhappy marriage while caring for her mentally ill sister, Cheyenne, and cowboy James struggles between what is right and finally finding true love.
When an elder Hispanic member of their community—Joaquin—learns his granddaughter, Angelica, has fallen into the hands of traffickers, this unlikely group of townsfolk unite and embark on an epic journey to save her. Angelica is being held by coyotes—the frightening human kind—across the river from the West Texas town of Presidio on the Mexican border. It will be a miracle if she survives long enough for her grandfather and his Happy crew to rescue her.
With poignancy and humor, Land of Dust and Hope deftlyillustrates the resilience of the human spirit in its forthright depiction of the experiences of people who are desperately trying to cross the US border and the importance of challenging the traditional notions of love, faith, and sin.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Discontent is brewing in Happy as Brother Bob questions his beliefs as pastor of a church. Jen, his choir director, flounders in her unhappy marriage while caring for her mentally ill sister, Cheyenne, and cowboy James struggles between what is right and finally finding true love.
When an elder Hispanic member of their community—Joaquin—learns his granddaughter, Angelica, has fallen into the hands of traffickers, this unlikely group of townsfolk unite and embark on an epic journey to save her. Angelica is being held by coyotes—the frightening human kind—across the river from the West Texas town of Presidio on the Mexican border. It will be a miracle if she survives long enough for her grandfather and his Happy crew to rescue her.
With poignancy and humor, Land of Dust and Hope deftlyillustrates the resilience of the human spirit in its forthright depiction of the experiences of people who are desperately trying to cross the US border and the importance of challenging the traditional notions of love, faith, and sin.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Used availability for Michael Downing's Land of Dust and Hope