Descanso for My Father

When his father died, Harrison Candelaria Fletcher wasnt quite two. His mother packed up his fathers belongings, put the boxes in a hall closet, and closed the door. The man in a box remained a mystery, hardly mentioned, and making only rare appearances in stories when Fletcher or his siblings inquired. Meanwhile, his young Hispanic mother transformed herself into an artist, scouting the back roads and secondhand shops of New Mexico for relics and unlikely treasures to add to her little shrines, or descansos. Look closely, shed say to her son. Everything tells a story. This book is Fletchers literary descanso, a piecing togetherfrom moments and objects and wordsof a fathers life, of the life lived without that father, and of his own mixed-race identity. Fletchers reflections unfold like a collage, offering a rich array of images and stories of life with his single mother, organizing weekend family car trips to explore graveyards and adobe ruins; of growing up on the fault lines of class and culture; of being a father who never had one of his own to learn from. From incidents and observations, Fletcher assembles a beautifully crafted portrait of his familys unspoken affliction with loss over the decades, a portrait that finally evokes the father at its heart.