Told with raw power and searing bluntness, and filled with important themes as immediate as today's headlines, Names on a Map is arguably the most important work to date of a major American literary artist.

Ramiro Lopez and Jake Upthegrove don't appear to have much in common. Ram lives in the Mexican-American working-class barrio of El Paso called "Dizzy Land." His brother is sinking into a world of drugs, wreaking havoc in their household. Jake is a rich West Side white boy who has developed a problem managing his anger. An only child, he is a misfit in his mother's shallow and materialistic world. But Ram and Jake do have one thing in common: They are lost boys who have never met their fathers. This sad fact has left both of them undeniably scarred and obsessed with the men who abandoned them. As Jake and Ram overcome their suspicions of each other, they begin to move away from their loner existences and realize that they are capable of reaching out beyond their wounds and the neighborhoods that they grew up in. Their friendship becomes a healing in a world of hurt.

San Antonio Express-News wrote, "Benjamin Alire Sáenz exquisitely captures the mood and voice of a community, a culture, and a generation"; that is proven again in this beautifully crafted novel.

Marketing Plans:

<bu> Author tour: El Paso, San Francisco, Southwest.

<bu> Galleys available in May.

Novelist, children's writer and poet, Benjamin Alire Saenz is at the forefront of the emerging Latino literatures. He is a Lannan Fellow and a recipient of the American Book Award. A frequent speaker throughout the country, he teaches at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Benjamin Alire Saenz is the author of two novels-Carry Me Like Water and The House of Forgetting, which will be made into a full-length motion picture. He lives in El Paso, Texas.