Available now!
not a matter of love
and other stories
Winner of the Many Voices Project, New Rivers Press
 
"Beth Alvarado’s splendid first book burns with the landscape of the Southwest and the quiet passions of its characters.  Potent and darkly beautiful, these are unforgettable stories that haunt us long after the book is closed.  Not a Matter of Love is a marvelous debut.”                —-Karen Brennan, author
of The Garden in Which I Walk and Being with Rachel
    
"Not a Matter of Love invites us into that still largely unexplored territory in which Hispanics and Anglos share their lives as lovers, students, drug dealers and users, spouses, parents, step-parents and siblings.  But, more important, these artful and surprising stories bring us a cast of diverse, powerfully drawn individuals as they struggle to find their own truth.”                                 —-Elizabeth Evans, author of
       Carter Clay & Suicide's Girlfriend
"Ten tales of broken familes and fearless youths against the backdrop of Arizona's searing heat and saguaros.  Alvarado's stories touch not only on the clash of Hispanic and Anglo cultures, but on the places where they connect, however haphazardly. In 'Just Family,' Tony has just been released from a five-year stint in prison.  He’s trouble and his family doesn’t expect much from him but more prison or an early end, but they play along at normality, hoping the tethers of family will save him. 'Bastille Day' and 'Limbo' bookend the collection as sad portraits of. . . young Mexican-American men trapped by circumstances rougher than they are. . .  In 'Emily’s Exit'  . . Emily disappears into the desert on some kind of trek of spiritual martyrdom, leaving behind a grieving mother and an irritated younger sister.  Found nearly dead in a Mexican desert, Emily is brought to the house of a reclusive woman to pray over the bodies of her dead children, two girls encased in glass.  'Can You Hear Me?' finds artist Isabel in Italy, avoiding the phone calls of her possibly schizophrenic brother Van.  While Isabel tries to soak up the local color, Van and  his loser friends plot a scheme to import heroin from Afghanistan. If only Van could turn off the voices in his head, he might strike it rich. . .” 
                                                —-Kirkus Reviews