SAN ANTONIO — Are we doomed to pay for the sins of our ancestors, and can we somehow be better than our forebears?
That’s the question South Texas native Elizabeth Gonzalez James asks audiences with her new book “The Bullet Swallower.”
James’s story is based loosely on her great-grandfather who was a bandido in the 1800’s. He was chased down by Texas Rangers, shot in the face but survived and became known as “El Tragabalas” or “The Bullet Swallower.”
“It was a story that I had grown up hearing. But I knew that I was always going to eventually work on this story. I was really excited about the idea of doing a western with a Mexican protagonist because there just aren’t a lot of those," James said.
James was also enamored with the story of her cousin Lalo “El Piporro” Gonzalez who was a huge movie star in Mexico in the 1950’s and 60’s. One of the main characters in the novel is roughly based off Lalo.
“The Bullet Swallower” follows two timelines, the first highlights Antonio Sonoro, a Mexican bandido in the late 1800’s who sets off for Texas to rob a train full of riches and save his family from poverty, but things quickly go awry, and Antonio finds himself on a quest for revenge that endangers not only his life but his immortal soul.
Readers are then catapulted into 1965 and follow Jaime Sonoro, a famous Mexican singer and actor. Jaime soon discovers a book about the history of his cruel ancestors and then starts seeing a mysterious figure who has come to collect a cosmic debt, generations in the making. Jaime realizes he may have to pay for his ancestor’s crimes unless he can find out the true story behind his great-grandfather, Antonio Sonoro, The Bullet Swallower.
James stopped in several major Texas cities to promote the new novel.
Inside the Nowhere Bookshop, a quaint store located on the north side of San Antonio, James opened up about her new novel and how it breaks through the dated stereotypes of the western genre and life along the border.
“I really wanted readers to take away a more complicated picture of the border. I think that it is a very complicated place, it’s a very fluid place. It’s a place that I’m still struggling to understand,” she said.
James added, “Nobody from the border lives their life on this side or that side, they’re on both sides and that’s actually an incredibly special circumstance to be able to be in the middle of two cultures at once, and so I hope that readers come away understanding the beauty and specialness of that.”
James also points out that people are not born wholly good or wholly bad, it’s a mixture of our history, who our parents are, where we come from and the choices we make. James didn’t want to make Antonio solely a villain and the Texas Rangers the good guys, she wanted to stay true to what she believes.
“No person lives free of history. We’re all a product of our environment, of our parents, of where we were born, our economic circumstances, but then we’re also a product of every choice that we’ve ever made. So, I wanted to show that it’s not just nurture or nature, it’s both, it’s all of it together,” she said.
James started researching in 2015 and began writing her rough draft in 2016. She completed it in 2021 but still worked with her agent and editor for a couple more years. She said major world events like the presidential election in 2016 and the Uvalde shooting impacted her writing and how the novel unfolded.
“All these things were happening and I’m a person who lives in the world and I experienced these events and they’re painful to me emotionally. And I realized that I wanted to write about it. And it is all in there, in the book, it’s hidden and only I know like where those little pieces are of my reaction to the world and what was going on,” she said.
James added that while the world changed dramatically, she grew as well. She mused that the person she is today is different than the person who started writing the book eight years ago.
“I realized that a book is a lot more like a river, you can’t step in the same river twice. And I realized that the book really changed as a result of me responding to these real-world things that were going on. And if I wrote the book from scratch today it would be totally different because I’m different and the world is different. And it was a really incredible thing to kind of realize over time,” James said.
Looking back on her characters James said that while she can somehow relate to each of them, there are two she really resonated with: Remedio and Maria.
Remedio’s character is one that is quite complex. He’s a collector of souls whose somehow tied to the Sonoro’s in a cosmic way.
“He (Remedio) kicks off the novel by sort of questioning what his role is in the universe and why he has this job and what does it all mean. And I think that questioning comes from me. I want to know why am I here? Is there a purpose? How should a person live in the world? Basically, like how can I be a good person,” she said.
Another character James connected with is Maria who created a book retelling the history of the Sonoro family going back to the time of Cain and Abel. In this book Maria eventually inserts herself into the story and explains that the Sonoro history is too big and too convoluted for her to explain. James said she could empathize with Maria while writing “The Bullet Swallower.”
James explained that she wanted to stay true to the facts, the history and the geography of the settings and historical events, but also loved to add magical realism to the pages. James joked that everything in her novel is true except for the stuff she made up.
“And I really really really really tried to stick to the truth of the geography and the buildings and all of that stuff. And I hope I got it right; nobody’s told me I got it wrong so far. So, if there was a real place I really tried to make it real,” James said.
James said her family has been supportive during her writing journey and many of them are excited to grab a copy.
“My family was really excited about it. I’ve had cousins reach out and they’re really excited to read the book. They’re really excited that this story that we all grew up hearing is getting a little bit of a spotlight shown on it," she said.
James dedicated “The Bullet Swallower” to her father, Zeke. James said she tried her best to remain true to their story and hopes readers love it as much as she does.
“You know it’s a part of him, it’s a part of me, it’s a part of that whole side of my family,” James said.
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