Longlisted for the PEN Faulkner Award • Finalist for The Story Prize • Finalist for the
Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction • Finalist for the California Book Award • Longlisted for
the Carnegie Medal for Excellence the Aspen Words Literary Prize and the New American Voices
Award "Ruben Reyes Jr. is a wonder." — Héctor Tobar An electrifying debut story collection
about Central American identity that spans past present and future worlds to reveal what
happens when your life is no longer your own. An ordinary man wakes one morning to discover
he’s a famous reggaetón star. An aging abuela slowly morphs into a marionette puppet. A
struggling academic discovers the horrifying cost of becoming a Self-Made Man. In There Is a
Rio Grande in Heaven Ruben Reyes Jr. conjures strange dreamlike worlds to explore what we
would do if we woke up one morning and our lives were unrecognizable. Boundaries between the
past present and future are blurred. Menacing technology and unchecked bureaucracy cut
through everyday life with uncanny dread. The characters from mango farmers to popstars to
ex-guerilla fighters to cyborgs are forced to make uncomfortable choices—choices that not only
mean life or death but might also allow them to be heard in a world set on silencing the
voices of Central Americans. Blazing with heart humor and inimitable style There Is a Rio
Grande in Heaven subverts everything we think we know about migration and its consequences
capturing what it means to take up a new life—whether willfully or forced—with piercing and
brilliant clarity. A gifted new storyteller and trailblazing stylist Reyes not only transports
to other worlds but alerts us to the heartache and injustice of our own.
