cover image The Bolero of Andi Rowe: Stories

The Bolero of Andi Rowe: Stories

Toni Margarita Plummer. Curbstone,$17.95 trade paper (136p) ISBN 978-0-8101-2767-8

A dreaminess marks Plummer's debut collection featuring troublesome first love among young Latinos in Los Angeles's San Gabriel Valley. An abuelita watches warily in "Olivia's Roses" as her sheltered granddaughter, Olivia, nearing high school graduation, is wooed by Anthony, a lanky, blue-eyed college student who stirs up unfamiliar feelings of being grown-up. College student Andi Rowe is a repeat character in several stories: in "Yard Work," Andi, intent on becoming an architect, is washing the car when she's called over by her elder neighbor, Rosa, and the two have a brief, awkward visit that underscores Old World neighborhood manners. In the title story, Andi's former boyfriend, Pete, a musician thinking about med school, is filled with a sense of loss and nostalgia after his breakup with another girl, and he starts writing a kind of bolero he and Andi used to listen to together. Similarly, a vague loneliness grips the precociously experienced Inez Suarez as she haunts a club on Sunset Boulevard in "All the Sex Is West," picking up two Israeli men who show her some kindness. The action is muted and understated, while Plummer's characters, anchored in a crass present, hanker for a sweeter world of their own imagining. (June)