Rafael Castillo's characters are a Chicano variation of Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks," sleepless souls lost in their own thoughts," Jacinto Jesus Cardona, author of Pan Dulce: Poems These eleven tightly-packed short stories, often allegorical yet visceral, range from the phantasmagorical "Aurora", whose misdeed has condemned her to a cyclical river of Eternal Return, to the agnostic Tomas and faithful Pedro in the theological "Penitent of Guadalupe Street", where truth is an enigma wrapped in a metaphor. In another story, a bellicose dwarf is murdered and the story is told from shifting points of view. In "Dwarfs and Penitents," an angry jilted husband searches the cobblestone streets of Prague in search of vengeance, while in "The Sands of Dhahran," a middle-age soldier battles his demons during Operation Desert Storm. In these luminous stories, Castillo give us penitents, dwarfs, lost youth, WWII vets, pachucos, doppelgangers, and memorable others populating the American literary landscape.

 "Complicated, interesting, and enthralling, Castillo has one of the most authentic voices coming out of Aztlan. Our inheritance is in his words," Sheila Sanchez-Hatch, author of Strong Box Heart "A personal memory of profound intimacy and delicately layered...Castillo's book is enticing and energizing," Carmen Tafolla, Sonnets To Human Beings.