The Day They Took My Uncle and Other Stories

The Day They Took My Uncle and Other Stories is a collection of 15 shorts by novelist Lionel Garcia, dealing mostly with working-class and poor inhabitants of the southwestern U.S. Difficulties encountered by Latinos in America are a recurrent theme. Characters include a divorc e who seduces her plumber, a stressed-out orderly in a Houston emergency room, an El Salvadoran army sergeant who develops a fascination with the Kennedys, and the mentally ill man of the title story whose impending institutionalization throws his neighborhood into chaos. Though the situations he describes are often bleak, Garcia mixes some humor in with the pathos.