The Last Karankawas: A Novel

by Kimberly Garza Narrated by Adriana Sananes, André Santana, Becca Q. Co, Reggie De Leon

Overview

"Debut author Garza skillfully links brilliantly crafted episodes to create an unforgettable community in Galveston, TX...Indeed, staying well-tuned to Garza's work earns enduring rewards."
- Booklist (starred review)

"These rich performances, a chorus of different tones and accents, create a beautiful tapestry of a complicated city and the people who call it home." - AudioFile Magazine

"Beautiful, complex, and subversive, The Last Karankawas is an important book about Texas from a powerful new voice in American fiction. I loved it." -Elizabeth Wetmore, New York Times bestselling author of Valentine

A blazing and kaleidoscopic debut about a tight-knit community of Mexican and Filipino American families on the Texas coast from a voice you won't soon forget.

Welcome to Galveston, Texas. Population 50,241.

A popular tourist destination and major shipping port, Galveston attracts millions of visitors each year. Yet of those who come to drink by the beach, few stray from the boulevards to Fish Village, the neighborhood home to individuals who for generations have powered the island.

Carly Castillo has only ever known Fish Village. Her grandmother claims that they descend from the Karankawas, an indigenous Texas people once believed to be extinct, thereby tethering them to Galveston. But as Carly ages, she begins to imagine a life elsewhere, undefined by her family's history. Meanwhile, her boyfriend and all-star shortstop turned seaman, Jess, treasures the salty, familiar air. He's gotten chances to leave Galveston for bigger cities with more possibilities. But he didn't take them then, and he sure as hell won't now. When word spreads of a storm gathering strength offshore, building into Hurricane Ike, each Galveston resident must make a difficult decision: board up the windows and hunker down or flee inland and abandon their hard-won homes.

Moving through these characters' lives and those of the extraordinary individuals who circle them, Kimberly Garza's The Last Karankawas weaves together a multitude of voices to present a lyrical, emotionally charged portrait of everyday survival. The result is an unforgettable exploration of familial inheritance, human resilience, and the histories we assign to ourselves, reminding us that the deepest bonds are forged not by blood, but by fire.

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company

Editorial Reviews

OCTOBER 2022 - AudioFile

Just like the lives of the characters they portray, the voices of four narrators mingle and blend in Garza’s poignant debut. In a series of interlocking stories about Mexican and Filipinx families, Garza captures the beating heart of Galveston, Texas. In a voice that is by turns bright, optimistic, and resigned, Becca Q. Co narrates the sections focusing on younger women who are navigating family and career. Adriana Sananes’s depiction of several family matriarchs is full of wisdom and headstrong humor. André Santana shines as Jess, a high school baseball star who finds his calling working on a fishing boat. Together, these rich performances, a chorus of different tones and accents, create a beautiful tapestry of a complicated city and the people who call it home. L.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

06/20/2022

Garza debuts with an accomplished account of the ties between members of a Galveston, Tex., Filipino and Mexican community as they prepare for the arrival of Hurricane Ike in 2008. Though there are many connected accounts from different points of view, the narrative centers on Carly Castillo, who longs to leave Galveston. After Carly’s mother returned to the Philippines without her, Carly was raised by her grandmother Magdalena, who is now declining from dementia. Magdalena tells her they’re the descendants of the Karankawa Indigenous tribe, trying to impart a tie to Galveston even as Carly longs to explore life elsewhere. Carly’s boyfriend, Jess Rivera, a promising baseball player, helps support his family by working with local fisherman Vinh Pham. Since his father was incarcerated, Jess’s mother rarely leaves the house, and the matriarch role has fallen to the eldest of his four sisters, Yvonne. Though readers might have trouble keeping track of the many characters, the strong sense of place carries through no matter who is talking, whether individual characters or a chorus of Filipino church members who scrutinize Carly (“we are afraid that what we suspect is true, that she has a Filipina mother but no Philippines anywhere in her”). This is a worthy love letter to Galveston. (Aug.)

From the Publisher

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
An Indie Next Pick
Named a Most Anticipated and Must-Read Book by BuzzFeed, Book Riot, and Ms. Magazine
One of Washington Independent Review of Books' Favorite Books of 2022

“A vivid account of Fish Village . . . The novel skillfully weaves together multiple points of view . . . pulling us into this time and place with a rich description of its particulars . . . Garza’s accomplished debut enriches the public imagination of this corner of America, and the communities within.”
—Melissa Chadburn, The New York Times Book Review

"Garza manages to expertly capture a range of voices in this stunning and elegiac polyphonic novel . . . Expect great things from this debut writer."
—The Los Angeles Times

“An ode to Galveston, Texas and especially its enmeshed Latino and Filipino communities . . . Heartfelt . . . Every city would be lucky for such a tribute.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“A beautifully written, emotionally compelling debut novel . . . This exquisite book marks the beginning of what will hopefully be a long and prodigious writing career by the extraordinary Kimberly Garza.”
—Brad Thor, TODAY

"Written in lyrical, nearly hypnotic prose that makes the reader feel the Texan humidity, this is a brilliantly plotted, startling, and richly rewarding exploration of the myths that bind people together, generational traumas, and the remarkable adaptability of humans."
—Booklist

"Stunning . . . Garza gracefully moves through the lives of various characters as they contend with family history and the meaning of home."
—Book Riot

“Garza highlights the diverse origins and worldview behind the brown faces of Texas’s south coast . . . Evocative, sometimes heartbreaking, and full of rich descriptions, The Last Karankawas is a love letter to the Galveston most tourists never see and a tribute to the people who sustain, and are sustained by, their adopted homeland.”
—Shelf Awareness

"Garza debuts with an accomplished account of the ties between members of a Filipino and Mexican community . . . This is a worthy love letter to Galveston.”
—Publishers Weekly

"An immersive experience of a particularly complex community which is both beautiful and dangerous . . . The Last Karankawas reflects and speaks to our present destabilized moment with storm-level intensity."
—The Washington Independent Review of Books

"The Last Karankawas is exactly the kind of book I’ve spent my life searching for as a Chicana of mixed and Filipino heritage. Kimberly Garza’s eloquent and deeply observant debut expands our understanding of South Texas and vibrantly honors the remarkable people who live there. This is a writer to watch."
—Kali Fajardo-Anstine, author of Woman of Light and Sabrina & Corina

"Beautiful, complex, and subversive, The Last Karankawas is an important book about Texas from a powerful new voice in American fiction. I loved it. These characters and their stories will stay with me."
—Elizabeth Wetmore, New York Times bestselling author of Valentine

“Devastating in its own clarity and nuance. The Last Karankawas has the power to change the way we see where we’ve been and what we may have left behind. A stunning debut from a talented writer.”
—Oscar Cásares, author of Where We Come From

“The Last Karankawas is a deft and moving portrait of ordinary lives lived in an extraordinary place. Kimberly Garza’s writing is warm, beautifully observed, and filled with human drama. Like all really good fiction, it opens our eyes to new experiences and shows us things we don’t already know.”
—Ian McGuire, bestselling author of The North Water

“With prose that is elegant and measured, sonorous and at times painfully beautiful, Kimberly Garza lays bare a Southern Texas that has somehow remained unsung until now. The Last Karankawas is not merely a book. . . It is a collection of incantations—secret and sacred, meant to be shared in a hush.”
—Miroslav Penkov, author of East of the West and Stork Mountain

Library Journal

08/05/2022

DEBUT Set in the years, months, days, and minutes before Hurricane Ike ravaged Galveston, TX in 2008, this debut is itself a swirling tempest of a novel. Ostensibly centering on Carly Castillo, a young woman of mixed Filipino and Mexican heritage— and, if her grandmother is to be believed, also descended from the Karankawas, an Indigenous Texan people until recently thought extinct—the narrative takes the shape of a narrative curlicue, moving forward and backward in time and alternating viewpoint chapters among friends, family, and even strangers in Carly's degrees-of-separation orbit. It's at once a city symphony of Galveston and an affecting portrait of why some people feel drawn to stay or return home while others feel compelled to run, to evacuate the state of their lives. The emotional palette anticipates and mirrors the impending hurricane, which forces more immediate and less abstract decisions onto the novel's memorable characters, who include an aged former philanderer who hunkers down while his sick wife is moved inland; an anonymous, specterlike former soldier; and Carly's dementia-addled grandmother, who believes age-old rituals can save the island. VERDICT Populated by indelible characters, this graceful, deeply compassionate work is a moving study of memory, the permeable boundaries it shares with myth, how it roils and folds and persists into the present, and how we are often forced to choose between learning to live inside it and trying to outrun it.—Luke Gorham

OCTOBER 2022 - AudioFile

Just like the lives of the characters they portray, the voices of four narrators mingle and blend in Garza’s poignant debut. In a series of interlocking stories about Mexican and Filipinx families, Garza captures the beating heart of Galveston, Texas. In a voice that is by turns bright, optimistic, and resigned, Becca Q. Co narrates the sections focusing on younger women who are navigating family and career. Adriana Sananes’s depiction of several family matriarchs is full of wisdom and headstrong humor. André Santana shines as Jess, a high school baseball star who finds his calling working on a fishing boat. Together, these rich performances, a chorus of different tones and accents, create a beautiful tapestry of a complicated city and the people who call it home. L.S. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940176473087
Publisher:	Macmillan Audio
Publication date:	08/09/2022
Edition description:	Unabridged

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