Arroyo by Summer Wood

Blink-and-you-miss-it Los Fuegos, New Mexico, is the setting for this fierce, funny, and heartbreaking debut novel. When Willie Lee Woolston first comes to town, she's hitchhiking through in the back of a pickup. Five years later she returns to find a place to hide out from the ghosts of her past. A blues singer with a buried voice and flame-red hair, Willie Lee is drawn to the hidden music of this dusty mining town, and here her dreams mingle with those of the townspeople--a family that lives in a boxcar; a pair of too-young lovers; a man who summons his brother by playing the accordion; and Chavela, a woman who makes her realize that sometimes love chooses us. When an accident at the mine threatens disaster, they all come together in a night of terrible beauty. Cinematic and lyrical, Arroyo is a deeply moving and ultimately hopeful book by the most distinctive Southwestern voice since Barbara Kingsolver.