Moving Serafina

Book excerpt: Late in life, Clayton Elliot faces long-deferred, hard choices. Circumstances force him to bury his recently deceased wife, Adelita, in the little West Texas border town of Solitario instead of next to their three-year old daughter on their hardpan ranch. To pay for Adelita’s cancer treatments, Clayton sold this marginal ranchland to water developers. By reuniting Serafina with her mother in Solitario, Clayton hopes to assuage his guilt about her death twenty-five years earlier. However, whether Clayton moves Serafina immediately or ignores the contracted deadline, either act will trigger drilling into the aquifer for water. His lifelong friends are vehemently opposed to drilling. When a young Mexican woman mysteriously enters his life, Clayton must delay his efforts to move Serafina and surreptitiously help this woman who has illegally crossed into Texas. This decision also raises the ire of Clayton’s friends. Throughout the novel, Clayton struggles with both the internal and external borders of his life. And the eccentric characters of Solitario find they, too, must confront their own geographical, psychological, and racial boundaries.