The setting is Three Rivers, Texas. The year is 2038. An industrialist named Pablo Henry Crick is the mayor of the town that’s become a surreal wasteland where reading books is against the law and the women work as indentured laborers at a fish cannery. The atmosphere is poisoned. The people are poor and under the thumb of Crick—who only gets rich in all of this.
Neftalí is the last of the literate citizens in the town. She hides books and she reads books. She and her best friend, Proserpina try to outwit Crick after a series of violent atrocities. Will they be able to rise up and reclaim their city? Can they do away with Crick’s “book shredders” and help preserve books—including the ones by a mysterious renegade author named Jazzmin Monelle Rivas?
Brother Brontë is hard to define. But it is full of adventure, profound themes and unforgettable characters. It’s an electric look at a future that is somehow plausible and resonant.
Guest:
Fernando A. Flores was born in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico, and grew up in South Texas. He is the author of the short story collections Valleyesque and Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas and the novel Tears of the Trufflepig, which was long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and was named Best Book of 2019 by Tor.com. His fiction has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, American Short Fiction, Ploughshares, frieze, Porter House Review and other publications. He lives in Austin, Texas.
