Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist by Kathleen Alcala

These fourteen magical stories, set in the Southwest and Mexico, move vividly between realism and imagination. According to author Rudolfo Anaya, Ms. Alcalá “captures the essence of magical realism in her work.” Many of the stories concern the generation of women who lived through the Mexican revolution. Those who survived found themselves in a world dominated by North America but with a nineteenth-century Spanish social structure and a pre-Columbian landscape and sensibility. The stories deal with the inner lives of these women and men, the world of dream and imagination and shifting reality.