Perpetual West by Mesha Maren

Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2022--San Antonio

Perpetual West by Mesha Maren takes place in El Paso and northern Mexico.  Two of the main characters are young man who was born in Juarez and immediately adopted by a white ultra religious couple from West Virginia and his wife who is estranged from her father and whose mother chose to keep the child and have her even though it would likely cost the mother her life due to having been diagnosed with cancer.  The young man wants to try to connect with his birth heritage and both he and his wife are enrolled in graduate school at UTEP.  The young man is working on a thesis research topic in sociology related to lucha libre, Mexican professional wrestling.  And the wife is trying to write a book or article around the theme of bold choices that women make in their lives.  Both are a bit disenchanted with their lives and there is little passion in their marriage. In his research, the husband meets a professional wrestler.  As time passes, a sexual relationship develops between the two of them.  Everything goes wrong for everyone one week when the wife has gone back east for a week and the two men are caught by a cartel warlord who has searched them down in the mountains of Chihuahua where they were visiting the wrestler's family.  The warlord is determined to have the wrestler work for him.  There are problems for the wife trying to get the police to search for her missing husband and for the two men who are separated with the husband being locked up and the wrestler being sent all over Mexico to fight--with minders watching over each of them.  All three characters are frustrated with the situation they find themselves in.  I felt that the build-up at the beginning of the book took too long causing me to put the book down more frequently than I would with a novel.  It's an interesting story and I ended up liking it, but it could be better edited, I think.  For a book with a gay theme, I gave it 4 stars out of 5 (although as general literature I would drop that to 3 1/2 stars out of 5).