Nopalito, Texas: Stories

by David Meischen

In this stunning debut story collection, everyone's got the blues but nobody is willing to sing it. Evelyn Smith, Candace Lambert, and Dorene Wahrmund chafe against rigid small-town expectations. Others in hardscrabble Nopalito find themselves fenced in--an aging gay liquor store owner estranged among his neighbors, a mother and son bound by mutual resentment, two neighboring farm boys attracted to each other. Their stories are driven by desperation, rarely spoken, that troubles the community's inhabitants as it nudges them toward connection, toward moments of hope. Meischen draws these characters with a tenderness that belies the hardness of their lives.ACCLAIM"The setting--replete with eight-cylinder cars, home perms, butane stoves, Buddy Holly glasses--is midcentury modern. It's 1955 in Nopalito, Texas, yet given the dearth of options for a girl who hopes to never be husbanded, and for aflibbertigibbet boy whose hands fly like birds when he talks, it might be 1855. These stories illuminate the other side of silence where words don't exist for desires that run counter to established norms. David Meischen's homespun but gorgeous words coalesce in a lush yet subtle style. Even bit players burdened with secret truth contemplate the world with attention to detail so tender it turns ordinary objects into sites of revelation. In this backwater outpost where everyone knows everyone, no one knows anyone. Each story is devastatingly beautiful and the book, more than a sum of its parts, is a consummate work of art."--Debra Monroe, author of It Takes a Worried Woman"In Nopalito, Stories, David Meischen is attuned to the quiet crises upon which a person's life turns. In clear, poignant, and often poetic language, we see the residents of a small South Texas town--daughters, sons, mothers, fathers, neighbors, friends, outsiders--pushing against the limits of their lives. Stubbornness, devotion, confusion, pride, and anger see them through the internal upheavals and seismic shifts of loss and grief. And at the end, you'll sigh deep and long and wonder at having held so much life, so much humanity, in such a slender volume."--ire'ne lara silva, author of flesh to bone"The linked stories of Nopalito, Texas feel artfully distilled yet also boundless. As the characters grow older, they intersect in ways both surprising and deeply satisfying. This stunning collection, full of lyrical prose and deep compassion, belongs in the Texan canon."--Stacey Swann, author of Olympus, A Novel"In this tremendous collection, David Meischen renders entire lives with extraordinary depth, breadth, and care. Like Alice Munro and Andrea Barrett, Meischen conveys the significance of the present moment by laying bare what has come before. Nopalito, Stories is a book to savor, and this is a writer to cherish."--Bret Anthony Johnston, author of Remember Me Like A NovelABOUT THE AUTHORDavid Meischen is also the author of the award-winning poetry collection Anyone's Son. He is cofounder and coeditor of Dos Gatos Press.

Genres: Short Stories

224 pages, Paperback

Published April 15, 2024

About the author

David Meischen is the author of Nopalito, Texas: Stories (University of New Mexico Press, 2024) and Caliche Road Poems (Lamar University Literary Press, 2024). Anyone’s Son, from 3: A Taos Press, won Best First Book of Poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters in 2020. A Pushcart honoree, with a personal essay in Pushcart Prize XLII, David is cofounder and Managing Editor of Dos Gatos Press. He lives in Albuquerque, NM with his husband—also his co-publisher and co-editor—Scott Wiggerman.

Reviews

[Scott Wiggerman · Rating 4 out of 5]

[This is my husband's book, so I don't want to say too much, as I might be a bit prejudiced in this review!] Nopalito, Texas, is a place most inhabitants seem to want to leave, a place for the damaged, dismayed, and desperate who seem to be stuck there. Nonetheless, the characters here learn to make lives for themselves, even if they're not the lives they imagined having. Not the most uplifting read, for sure, but well-written, especially the female and gay characters, not to mention the town of Nopalito itself, which comes to life as its own representative of small-town rural America. The stories jump from decade to decade, but many of the characters recur throughout them, so you can see the growth and change in them.

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was traveling to San Antonio, and as I am want to do when I go into a bookstore in a different town, I was looking for books from a local author. I found myself perusing the Texas author shelves when I came across this book. I was drawn in by the intriguingly inviting cover and the simple fictional town name of this collection of short stories. The blurb on the front of the book described it as "devastatingly beautiful", and I was bidden to buy it.

I cannot honestly say that I've ever found a more accurate book blurb, nor been more grateful for the decision to pick up a book. Every page felt like it transported me to another time and place where I can look into the lives of my own family's south Georgia roots and see all the joys and secrets that exist within country rural life. The dreams longed for, the hope stilted, and the truth of oneself buried underneath the weight of expectations and propriety. The most "devastatingly beautiful" aspect of this book was Meischen's ability to see all those longings wrapped up in the character of a young gay man coming of age in a town that didn't know what to do with him, and it made me more than ever wish for something better for those of my family members who found themselves in the same shoes and never had a chance to look beyond or live into the freedom of just being fully themselves. This book is a gem, and I look forward to Meischen's next work with fondness.

[Paulina · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Meischen was one of my English teachers in high school (we won't go into how many years ago that was!), and his love of writing was apparent even then. I was really excited to attend his reading in Houston a couple of weeks ago and get a signed copy of his first prose book!

Nopalito, Texas is a set of connected short stories about a set of characters who live in the fictional southeast Texas town of Nopalito from the 1950s to 1998. The characters recur throughout the collection, so it feels like a coherent tale and you do get growth and character development throughout. I started slowly, reading a story or two each night while I was on vacation; then ended up almost finishing the book on the 3+ hour plane flight home. I had two stories left that I finished before bed the day I got home. Needless to say, this one sucked me in and was hard to put down!

This is historical fiction, reflecting the not-always-pretty or easy realities of living in small town Texas during that period. Gender expression and queerness are recurring themes throughout the stories, treated with sensitivity but also without pulling punches. This book is definitely worth picking up!

[ebonee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book of short stories! It’s so enjoyable to read about the relationships shared by the towns people of Nopalito. I couldn’t put this book down every character became someone I knew and cared for. Being from Texas I’ve known plenty folks I could plug in as any one of the folks in nopalito.

[Ramona · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stories in this interconnected collection are gorgeously rendered, and the characters in Nopalito, a rural Texas town, are unforgettable. Most characters long for something beyond the town’s limits. Those who remain in Nopalito versus those who move away is a theme running throughout the collection.

Albert, a gay man who manages a liquor store in Nopalito, was one of my favorite characters. While traveling in Paris as a young man, he meets Claude who pronounces his name “Ahl-baire.” From that point on, Albert is insistent that everyone pronounce his name the French way. It’s funny and endearing but also a window into how Albert carves out a life for himself in Nopalito.

The women in the collection—Dorene, Candace, Evelyn and Mathilda—also shine. Life takes turns none of them expect, but the stories of these women and other characters in the book remain honest, raw, and authentically portrayed, in part because of Meischen’s careful attention to language. Words, sentences, and paragraphs are carefully tended to in this garden. The language is lush but also unrelenting. I cannot, for example, forget the image of Uncle Aaron, his body found several days after he passes away.

The writing here sinks the reader into this town and doesn’t let go. Meischen takes chances with structure and uses tone to devastating effect as well. I can’t honestly praise this collection enough. It’s a heartbreak waiting to happen for both characters and the reader, yet I’m enormously grateful I spent time in Nopalito and I look forward to reading more stories by this author.

[Rilla · Rating 5 out of 5]

NOPALITO, TEXAS is a collection of linked stories centered in a small South Texas town, but it’s so much more than that. Collectively the stories have the richness and complexity of a novel; individually they are so propulsive and story-driven you feel as if you’ve lived inside a novel when you reach the end. The stories cover generations of families, individuals as they struggle to leave and are held here by ties of love and helplessness. Taken together, these beautiful stories tell a history of any American small town and its environs, of lives and losses common to all of us, and yet the stories are so specific to this place, this town, this time that I’m left feeling that I know Nopalito intimately—every nuance of description, every place name, bit of vegetation, barn owl, cholla cactus, moonlit caliche road tells me just where I am—and when, because David Meischen evokes era so perfectly. Plus, his prose is simply gorgeous. Shifting voices and points of view and eras, he carries us into this lived world of love and loss and misunderstanding, and reminds us with a gentle, empathetic hand that nothing can break your heart like family. This is a book I’ll read again and again.

[Mark Bandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this collection. Meischen’s character development and imagery completely immerse the reader in the fictional (yet seemingly very real) small Texas town of “Nopalito.” Though each story can stand alone—each with its own arc and complexity—characters and challenges interweave across chapters and decades and conflicts in ways both trivial and consequential. Just like the lives of real people in real communities everywhere. Meischen’s counterbalance of the tragic and the triumphant, the lost and the found, the unloved and the beloved kept the pendulum of my emotions swinging from dismay to joy throughout. I intended to point out some particularly moving stories and characters, but I could not find a way to not “spoil” the experience for others (despite the available “spoiler” button). I’ll just let you enter Meischen’s town on your own to meet his fascinating, frustrating, and wonderful cast of characters. You won’t be disappointed.

[Laura A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Nopalito, Texas last summer (of 2024), after picking it up at David's book launch in Austin. I hadn't planned on buying anything that day (like I need another book to add to my stacks), but I couldn't resist after hearing him talk about it and read some excerpts.

I'm glad I did, I loved this book. Spending time with all of those characters was such a great escape. But it also made me feel some feelings about my own life that had maybe been looking for a channel to bubble up through. I wasn't quite ready to leave Nopalito when the book was over, but satisfied with how the stories ended, and continued to think about the characters long after closing the cover.

Final point: I joined Goodreads just to leave this review.

[Jennifer Easterday · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a fantastic read. I couldn't put it down. The writing is so evocative and compelling--not a wasted word, image, or idea. I'm reminded of Frank O'Connor or other short story masters who manage to infuse a lifetime of complicated meaning into the characters of short stories, never skimming the surface and never maudlin. This is one of my favorite books and I was deeply sad to finish it because it meant an end to both beautiful writing and great story.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

We chose this title for our book group. The conversations it has sparked have been like many scenes in this book: consequential, nuanced, and intertwined. “Everyone’s got the blues” in Nopalito, Texas, so while it isn’t a collection of happy stories, this book is a page-turner as you follow fascinating, tortured souls through their lives in a tiny town in 1950’s-1960’s Texas.