Mexico is only eight miles from Bravo University. When Minerva Mondragón, candidate for a tenure-track Border Studies position, suggests Professor Quigley take her across the border for lunch before the interview, he acquiesces uneasily. He can’t afford to scare her off, so doesn’t mention he hasn’t crossed over in more than a year because of the drug cartel-related violence. The first two candidates have turned down the job offer, and the committee can’t lose this applicant. But lunch in the fictional border town of La Reina leads to shocking consequences for the candidate and her hapless guide. Minerva never returns from the restaurant’s bathroom and Quigley, feeling guilty, convinces himself that she has decided to disappear. He returns to the United States without reporting her missing or mentioning the trip to his colleagues. Meanwhile, the applicant finds herself bound and gagged in the back of a taxi, victim of a kidnapping. A host of quirky characters populate these pages. There’s the bumbling university professor trying to cover his ass and the kidnapped woman attempting to escape a dire situation alive. The candidate’s dissertation director knows just enough about Bravo University’s government-sponsored spy training program to endanger Minerva’s life. And the new leader of the Gamboa organization is the son who has been educated to take over the financial side of the business but has no idea how to handle the intra-gang war that erupted following his father’s imprisonment in the United States. A long-time professor of literature and creative writing in South Texas, José Skinner writes darkly comedic scenes with an insider’s understanding of university and border life and the narco violence that has disrupted them.
