| Late in Clayton Elliot's life, he faces hard and long deferred choices. Following the recent death of his wife, Adelita, he is forced to bury her in the little Texas border town of Solitario instead of next to their three-year old daughter's remains on their hardpan ranch. To pay for Adelita's cancer treatments, Clayton has contracted to sell this marginal ranch land to water developers.
By deciding to reunite Serafina with her mother in Solitario, Clayton hopes to reconcile his own perceived culpability in his daughter's death 25 years earlier. However, whether Clayton moves Serafina immediately or ignores the contracted deadline to do so, either act will trigger the drilling into the aquifer for extracting millions of gallons of water. Though his lifelong friends sympathize with Clayton, they are vehemently opposed to this ominous scheme. And Clayton must call on these people to help him exhume Serafina from the rock-hard earth.
To further complicate Clayton's dilemma, a young Mexican woman mysteriously enters his life. As he learns more of her imminent crisis, he decides he must once more delay his efforts to move Serafina and surreptitiously help this woman who has illegally crossed the Rio Grande into Texas. This decision further raises the ire of some of Clayton's friends.
Throughout the novel, Clayton continues to struggle with the borders both internally and externally imposed onto his life. And in the complex course of events, the eccentric characters of Solitario must also confront their own choices concerning crossing or remaining inside geographical, psychological and racial boundaries. |
