American writer Manuel Muñoz is a three-time winner of the prestigious O Henry award for short stories, and the author of the noirish, innovative and underrated novel What You See in the Dark. The 10 rich and resonant stories in The Consequences are set mostly during the 1980s, in California’s sprawling Central Valley, a fabulously fertile agricultural basin that generates immense riches for a few, and precarious, poorly paid work for those – mostly Mexican, or of Mexican origin – who labour in the fields in the shadow of La Migra, the Immigration and Naturalisation Service.
The opening story, Anyone Can Do It, begins with the sentence: “Her immediate concern was money.” Delfina is new in town. Along with other men, her husband has not returned from a day working in the fields, possibly seized by the authorities. Waiting on the steps of her house, she is approached by a woman, Lis, who proposes that they team up to pick peaches and share the earnings. Rent is due in a couple of days, and Delfina hesitates but agrees. With immense skill Muñoz tightens the narrative screw, showing how deprivation and desperation can lead to ignoble choices.
