Oaxaca, 1998

Oaxaca, 1998 is a richly textured story of new beginnings that follows Maggie O'Neill, whose life in Houston has become a story of loss. Maggie, always in a contentious relationship with her mother, becomes her caretaker when the difficult woman is dying of cancer. Maggie's marriage of almost twenty-five years ends in divorce, and her only child has left Houston to find his independence. Maggie is left with little more than her camera, to which she, a novice, warily entrusts her future.

Desperate to begin a new life, she drives her old SUV to Laredo and fights off her doubts as she crosses the border into Mexico. Slowly, the Mexican landscape and people open her eyes to a fresh way of seeing through the lens of her camera. During a stopover in San Miguel de Allende, she receives unsolicited advice to go to Casa Azul, Frida Kahlo's house in Coyoacan. Disturbed by Frida's self-portraits, Maggie pushes on to Oaxaca, where, on impulse, she enrolls in a watercolor class taught by Connor, a visiting Texas artist. From there the story unfolds through both Maggie's and Connor's eyes.

Donley Watt's own experiences of living in Oaxaca and his close observation of detail help to people his novel with flesh-and-blood characters-and animate the beauty and violence of life south of the border.