The Scapegoat: Memories of the Sonoran Desert

This is a detective novel based on two kidnapping cases in Nuevo León, México in 1993. As the cases are resolved, the protagonists’ moral ambiguity and corruption are brought to light. Divided into three sections, each narrator provides data on the crimes. In the first, Carla Rodríguez, a naïve, young student aspiring to become a reporter, interviews relatives, friends, and professors related to the two cases to gather data to write her master’s thesis. The main topic is the forced immigration of Mexican families to the United States because of unsafe conditions created by drug trafficking. On the bus that takes her to Monterrey, where she conducts her investigation, she meets Francisco Villanueva, a young landowner, who facilitates her contacts and with whom she lives a short romance. He is the second section’s narrator. He recounts memorable events in his life that tie him to the problem raised. In the third section, the third protagonist narrates his version, indirectly solving the rest of the unknowns.Venezuelan by birth, Dr. Grisel Gómez-Cano has lived much of her life in Texas, where she worked for more than thirty years as a professor of anthropology, English, and literature, Assistant Dean, and Director of the Mexican-American/ Latino Studies Program at the Houston Community College. Since 2010 she has published several books on Mexican and Venezuelan mythology, a family genealogy, and historical chronicles of Mexican immigrants in Texas. In recent years she has participated in numerous international short-story contests, where she has won awards. Her stories have been published in magazines in Spain, Perú, Chile, and the United States. This is her second novel.