Tears of the Trufflepig

"At its heart, the novel may be a border story, but it’s a bizarre, macabre, and wryly funny one that doesn’t need to do much to damn those who would look at the border and presume to understand it."—Joshua Rivera, The Nation

"A bizarre fever dream of a book made all the more frightening by its eerie plausibility . . . Flores never overplays his hand. Throughout the book, he grounds his vision of the future in enough realism that even the strangest parts of the story come across as plausible . . . Debut novels can be shaky affairs, but Flores writes like a seasoned veteran—his structure and pacing are perfect. And he proves to be an expert at tone. The novel has a hard-boiled noir vibe, but Flores never indulges in the genre’s clichés. Tears of the Trufflepig is a beautifully crafted novel that asks serious questions but doesn’t lose its heart."—Michael Schaub, Texas Observer

"An exhilarating borderland dystopia . . . headlong and inventive . . . [Flores] capture[s] half-real, half-intuitive, entirely original impressions of a contemporary border region as a place where, increasingly, nature is walled in, authority is tied to spectacular cruelty, and both corruption and everyday resistance to it flourish."—Michael Agresta, Texas Monthly

"[Tears of the Trufflepig] blend[s] noir with with magical realism . . . Bellacosa is good company for the reader, refreshingly gentle and loving in a fictional and real-life terrain scarred by abysses of cruelty and greed, where kindness is distrusted or dismissed as boring and naive . . . The key is just to go along for the ride. And why not? It’s what Bellacosa does. His quest may be meandering and bizarre, nightmarish and heart-rending, but the journey is well worth taking."—Jean Huets, Ploughshares

"A trippy debut novel set in a dystopian near-future South Texas . . . Flores expertly lampoons the narcotraficante predilection for exotic collecting and baroque violence . . . The novel delivers where it counts."—Harper's Magazine

"Move over, chupacabra—there’s a new mythical Southwestern beast in town: the trufflepig, a creature worshipped by a lost Aranana Indian tribe in this exuberant novel set on a trippier version of the American border."—The Millions

"One of the most thrilling debut novels in recent history. Tears of the Trufflepig is funny and thrilling and tragic."—Los Angeles Review of Books