Crossing Vines: A Novel Volume 2

If you were unfamiliar with Rigoberto Gonzalez, it wouldn't take many pages of reading his first novel, "Crossing Vines," to suspect that his prior book was one of poetry, not prose. Each sentence, every paragraph, all chapters possess the clarity and music of poetry even in recounting the often harsh and always difficult lives of a crew of grape pickers. In a series of vignettes focusing on different characters, Gonzalez allows us into the lives and painful pasts of these workers. Gonzalez avoids the melodramatic and cliche when it would be easy to fall into such traps. This is a poetic, powerful first novel.