Milagro Lane
by Jay Brandon
9780916727574 Cost: $17.95
Paperback with French flaps , 254 pages
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Critical Praise for Milagro Lane
- Jay Brandon perfectly captures San Antonio in all its colorful
craziness. Part mystery, part insider's guide, Milagro Lane is a wonderful romp through a wonderful city.
— Rick Riordan, author of the Tres Navarre mysteries and the Percy Jackson and the Olympians fantasy novels
- In Milagro Lane Jay Brandon does for San Antonio, Texas, what Raymond Chandler did for Los Angeles: he makes the city the most compellingly authentic character in a book filled to bursting with compellingly authentic characters. Milagro Lane is a page-turner. We are seduced as much by Brandon's affectionate and informed portrayal of San Antonio, as by Brandon's abundant
gifts as one of the country's masters of the mystery.
— Sarah Bird, author of How Perfect Is That? and Yokota Officer's Club
- Within Jay Brandon's Milagro Lane beats the heart—el corazón—of a great city. A beguiling mystery that leads us down plenty of intriguing blind alleys, a whodunit populated with flesh-and-blood San Antonians and imagined characters real enough to stand up and walk off the page, Milagro Lane is this and much more. The main character—the conscience of the book—is San Antonio itself, a South Texas border city with Southern charm that remains a mystery to most of the country and to many of its
inhabitants. Brandon's observational acuity and quicksilver talent translates those urban rhythms into a cohesive page-turner.
— Steve Bennett, Book Editor of the San Antonio Express-News
Reviews
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"suspense, wonder and imagination"
San Antonio Express-NewsMay 10, 2009
Reviewed by Vincent BosquezIn 2001, the San Antonio Express-News revived a 19th-century newspaper tradition by contracting Jay Brandon, a local attorney and award-winning novelist, to serialize a fictional tale set in the Alamo City in real time, weaving in actual news events, living persons and local attractions.
The result was Milagro Lane, which debuted in March of that year and continued with two 850-word chapters a week, published on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the "S.A. Life" section. The ensuing 91 chapters, with titles such as "The Mayor as Magician" and "Best Naked Sightings," captured the public's imagination. Brandon's e-mail account was full of requests to continue the story and to put it in book form.
The long wait is finally over as San Antonio's Wings Press has bound Brandon's elusive story into an addictive mystery novel. He'll read from the novel and sign copies Thursday at the Twig Book Shop.
Written for the daily newspaper audience, Milagro Lane is steeped in intrigue from first page to last. Brandon weaves a captivating tale of mystery and suspense set primarily in Alamo Heights and Olmos Park. But the author manages to set scenes and send his characters to virtually every neighborhood and landmark in San Antonio, from the Malt House to the Plaza Club.
Then there are the real-life characters. Some of them may have been more prominent in 2001, but their names are still recognizable, while others have passed away. Earning a shout-out in one fashion or another are politicians such as state Sen. Jeff Wenthworth, U.S. Rep. Charlie Gonzalez and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson; media personalities Fred Lozano, Rick Casey (who was editor of the "Milagro" project), and Ricci Ware; and men of the cloth including Archbishop Patrick Flores and Father David Garcia.
Brandon has done his homework, and as a veteran author of legal thrillers set in San Antonio, he knows that a mysterious lady in red is not a bad way to keep readers turning the pages (and buying the newspaper, editors hoped).
That crimson woman is Estela Valenzuela. She appears at the funeral of the scion of one of the city's oldest, richest families, and Gabe Grohman, the son of the deceased, becomes infatuated with her. With Estela's help, he discovers a San Antonio he never knew, along with a mystical part of the city: Milagro Lane, an imaginary street of inspiration. (Yes, there's a bit of magical realism here.)
Milagro Lane is an insightful exploration of the haves and have-nots, of good and evil, of lust and love lost and found. In the hands of a lesser writer, this sort of stuff could easily have turned mean-spirited and one-dimensional. Instead, we're treated to a story filled with suspense, wonder and imagination.
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Vincent Bosquez is president of the Society of Latino and Hispanic Writers of San Antonio and director of public relations at Palo Alto College.
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There's a lot of San Antonio in Milagro Lane
An Interview with Jay BrandonSan Antonio Express-NewsMay 10, 2009
Recently, Jay Brandon was finally able to close a chapter in his life. That big pile of newspapers in his office, nearly 100 of them that mapped the story of Estela Valenzuela and her knowledge of "Milagro Lane," went into storage. After nearly a decade, the novel, serialized in 2001 in the Express-News, has been bound in book form, published by San Antonio's Wings Press.
"I liked very much writing in the old tradition of installments in a newspaper," says Brandon, an attorney who has written 13 more traditional novels, mostly legal thrillers set in San Antonio. "That was a challenge that added to the fun. One consequence is that this is a sort of novel-for-the-attention-deficit. Each small segment has to have its own story arc, character moments, and payoff."
The writer answered a few questions for the Express-News.
Q. The novel was written in serial format, which is sort of an antiquated, Dickensian way to write. What was that process like? Were you literally making it up as you went along?
A. I knew about where the story was going, but it was still very much a work-in-progress as I wrote. Actual news events made their way into the story. And when I went to the coast that summer, so did the story. The pressure was constant, but after a while the characters took over the story. By the last few months, I was enjoying watching what happened.
Q. How did the story come about? Did it begin with Estela? A certain scene? The ending?
A. The idea from the beginning was that Milagro Lane would be a very San Antonio novel, with locations all over the city. So I needed a character who felt at home in every quadrant of San Antonio. That was the first thing I knew about Estela Valenzuela. Plus I'd always wanted to start a story with a woman in a red dress appearing at a funeral. Soon after the story started, a woman reader sent me a long e-mail about spending the evening with Estela in a border town. I'm not sure who was kidding whom. But after a while I started expecting to meet Estela myself. I loved her, loved writing about her. One reader called her a "mystic warrior princess," which seemed odd at first -- there's almost no swordplay in Milagro Lane" -- but very much captured her spirit.
Q. How did the story evolve? Did you stay faithful to an outline? Or did the story meander here and there as you wrote?
A. I had a sort of outline, yes, and a sense of how the story would end. But it was as twisty as Milagro Lane itself, and took its own turns that were unexpected even for me. Let me tell you, this is no way to write a mystery novel. Usually I can rewrite. This time the earlier chapters were already in print. I couldn't go back and plant a clue. But the story always worked out.
Q. How did you decide which real-life people to include in the book?
A. That just worked out. City managers Alex Briseño and Terry Brechtel appeared, as well as Judge Mike Peden, my officemate Sue Hall, and several others. I liked a scene where Gabe Grohman said he was going to meet with "the heads of the five families," nearly half of whom were real-life scions of prominent S.A. families, Pat Frost and Edward Steves. Everyone took their appearances with good grace, even architect Ted Flato, whom I had appear in a rather seedy bar. He told me later he actually did have business meetings in a similar place, just to get out of the office (and he drank coffee in the bar, or so he said).
Q. You worked pretty closely with then Express-News columnist Rick Casey on the serial publication. What was that relationship like? Did he suggest plot directions and characters? Were there actual stories Casey couldn't print that wound up in the fictional Milagro Lane?
A. I don't remember Rick ever suggesting plot directions or characters, though he did suggest occasional incidents. He talks about this in his foreword to the book. He had information that an S.A. city councilman had taken a bribe, but didn't have verification for the story that met his own standards, so instead he gave me all the details and we put it fictionally into Milagro Lane -- both hoping the councilman would recognize himself. (Oops, gave away the gender.)
Q. You are known for your legal thrillers set in San Antonio. Although Milagro Lane is a mystery, sort of, it's more than that. What did you want to accomplish, from a literary standpoint, with this novel?
A. I never set out to be a mystery writer; that just happened. In Milagro Lane I wanted to tell a story free of the legal-thriller framework. It was liberating. Plus I wanted it to be funny, which was a real change from my usual novels.
-- Interview by Steve Bennett, Book Editor, San Antonio Express-News
About This Author
Read more about Jay Brandon HERE.