Descanso for My Father - (American Lives) by Harrison Candelaria Fletcher (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

When his father died, Harrison Candelaria Fletcher wasn't quite two. His mother packed up his father's belongings, put the boxes in a hall closet, and closed the door. The "man in a box" remained a mystery, hardly mentioned, and making only rare appearances in stories when Fletcher or his siblings inquired. Meanwhile, his young Hispanic mother transformed herself into an artist, scouting the back roads and secondhand shops of New Mexico for relics and unlikely treasures to add to her "little shrines," or descansos. "Look closely," she'd say to her son. "Everything tells a story."
This book is Fletcher's literary descanso, a piecing together--from moments and objects and words--of a father's life, of the life lived without that father, and of his own mixed-race identity. Fletcher's reflections unfold like a collage, offering a rich array of images and stories of life with his single mother, organizing weekend family car trips to explore graveyards and adobe ruins; of growing up on the fault lines of class and culture; of being a father who never had one of his own to learn from. From incidents and observations, Fletcher assembles a beautifully crafted portrait of his family's unspoken affliction with loss over the decades, a portrait that finally evokes the father at its heart.

Review Quotes

"Descanso for My Father is laced with stories about people encountering ghosts. Candelaria Fletcher may not be clairvoyant, but he conjures up the spirits of his ancestors in this unusual and moving book."--Jenny Shank, High Country News -- (9/3/2012 12:00:00 AM)

"An homage not only to his dad but to Harrison's own boyhood joys, sorrows and searching, the book makes clear the author's expansive literary sensibilities."--Kirkus Reviews -- (2/1/2012 12:00:00 AM)

"Fletcher's prose is simply gorgeous, and Albuquerque's cultural heritage is richly depicted in this book of essays, which adds to our understanding of family, landscape and their role in the formation of identity. An exquisite literary debut."--Rigoberto Gonzalez, El Paso Times-- (3/25/2012 12:00:00 AM)

"Ultimately it is language and a sharp eye for detail, not suspense, that pulls the reader along. . . . In a memoir-drenched era of publishing, Descanso is refreshing."--Jana Fornario, Southwestern American Literature

"Fletcher deftly shows us the meaning of the word 'quest'--investigation, dream, and religious pursuit all cohere around the essential mystery of one man's life. In the process, the author faces his own relics, making a large picture out of the bright shards of memory and uncertainty."--Judith Kitchen, author of Distance and Direction -- (9/26/2011 12:00:00 AM)

"Like the dreamlike shadowboxes of Joseph Cornell, Fletcher assembles scraps of imagery and inherited keepsakes into an enchanting quest to understand his family's stories. . . . In the same way a painter applies the principles of negative space to a composition, Fletcher, who understands the endless possibilities of the essay form, relies on memory and observation, while safeguarding the sense of absence, the space of silence in his prose."--Jericho Parms, Rumpus-- (1/15/2013 12:00:00 AM)

About the Author

Harrison Candelaria Fletcher teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is the winner of a New Letters Literary Award, High Desert Journal Obsidian Prize, Pushcart Prize Special Mention, and has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award and PEN Center Literary Award.