Tales, interviews, and culture/culinary essays that drew fans in border region papers and Harpers magazine, IMAGINARY LINES gives a warm, humorous, sometimes dark portrait of frontiers not just of the Mexico/California border, but of many invisible fault lines in the human condition: rich/poor, third/first world, home/foreign, male/female. A rare collaboration between two writers across some of the more obvious lines - Catholic Mexican mother Ana Maria Corona and jaded American muckraker Linton Robinson - IMAGINARY LINES transforms the life stories of maids, matadors, gigolos, cooks, gamblers, and con men into metaphors for the vague but palpable fault lines that separate us, yet bind us together. IMAGINARY LINES is a book celebrated by cover artist Victor Cauduro, one of Mexico's finest and most celebrated painters, and by Pulitzer nominee Luis Urrea, who considers it a "well guided tour" to the labyrinths of intercultural interface.

REVIEW

Of all the places where cultures meet across imaginary lines, the California / Baja California border is arguably the richest--incultural cross-polinization, in shock, in uproar, in sheer numbers going both ways.  San Diego, for example, is the only region where the numbers of undocumented crossers has not dropped, but risen.  Tijuana is the most visited tourist city on earth, far outdrawing Disneyworld.  This is not an immigration book, nor would I call it a border book.  But it is a well-guided journey into an interzone where gigolos and chefs, wanderers and mothers, bad guys and dreamers swirl.  Many of its insights make you feel like you've enjoyed a good meal--perhaps a fish taco and a cerveza next to the Mexican sea.

Reviewed by: Luis Alberto Urrea, Member: Latino Literary Hall of Fame, Nominee: 2005 Pulitzer Prize

EXCERPT

When Juanjo lifted the copper cover, she was served with the delight of a lurid, pop-eyed vision from hell staring right back at her.  Naturally she became completely discomposed by the sight of the goat head, and started dancing up and down, shrieking. And I am afraid the rest of us made it worse because the goat skull looked so comical with its cross-eyed stare. We all laughed until we were crying, especially when one of the radish  "eyes" fell out and rolled off the table toward Clara and her collapse became complete. We laughed so hard red sauce was running out of our mouths and down our chins. Clara must have thought her family had suddenly turned into Satanist vampires because she ran out into the street crying for help. Even though we were all punished for torturing her so, she still reacts very ungraciously if anyone waves a pair of radishes at her, generally calling us all a pile of cabrones..