The Complete History of New Mexico

“If you could distill the generous voice of Rick Bass, the verve of Lorrie Moore and the exacting prose of Charles Baxter into a single concoction, you might have something close to Kevin McIlvoy’s remarkable The Complete History of New Mexico. Kevin McIlvoy has long been one of this country’s most talented and original writers, and with this book he has outdone himself.” —Brady Udall

“The Complete History of New Mexico” is no ordinary research paper, and this is no ordinary collection of short stories. Eleven-year-old Chum’s “history” unfolds over three distinctive and increasingly disturbing sections. He tells that “Coronado explored around and found Santa Fe in 1610;” “William Becknell was tracking wagons over everyplace in 1821;” and how every day his best friend Daniel is afraid to go home.

McIlvoy intersperses the title novella with equally distinctive stories. Laura, a plain, overweight nurse encounters a terrified young man on his way to the Vietnam war and takes matters into her own hands. An enormous fiberglass rhinoceros lives in a family’s barn, and ultimately provides shelter from relentless sadness and bad luck. Zach spends time with his “white trash” relatives, only to find that beneath the constant cussing, cursing, and hard work, is true love.

“The Complete History of New Mexico is the book equivalent of a Chile pepper: exotic, unpleasant and transcendent all at once.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune