Maria, Maria: & Other Stories

DEBUT “There’s always a price for conjuring in darkness,” explains the instructor in “Brujería for Beginners,” which opens this iridescent first collection from former PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow Rubio. “You won’t always know what it is until payment is due.” Purveying characters (both women and animals) with otherworldly powers, Rubio steps across the thin border between life and a dangerous beyond to consider what such payments might entail. For instance, a woman following strict ritual when agreeing to bury her deceased husband’s head in his native Brazil plans to break her promise to remain with him and instead return to California. But does she? In the ambitious title novella, 12-year-old Maite (Maria Teresa) loses her celebrity psychic mother LaZuli (Maria Lucia) in a climate-devastated near-future and eventually meets her mother’s estranged twin (Maria Caracol), whose Book of Marias traces their heritage back to a time when the Moon intervened to protect animals from the Sun. Involving a near-sacrifice and ending in a battle between a blue jaguar and the golden crocodile, the narrative sometimes overreaches but remains a lush tour de force.