PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE

The search for truth is a nightmare in these two debut novels. In Deborah Schupack’s Boy on the Bus, a mother worries that the 8-year-old who has gotten off the bus is not her real son, Charlie, although as her husband says, It sure looks enough like him. The family shares her unease but looks to her for certainty. Library Journal calls the novel utterly original and says it preys on a fear that every mother must experience when looking at her son or daughter. Kirkus Reviews says, Schupack announces her presence at the table of writers who deserve to be heard.

In Sergio Troncoso’s The Nature of Truth, a young Mexican-German researcher, Helmut Sanchez, discovers sordid truths about the renowned Yale scholar for whom he works, Werner Hopfgartner. The shocking act Sanchez commits in response to his discovery seems to him the morally correct choice, but it plays out in complex and very troubling ways. Says fellow novelist, Dagoberto Gilb, of this book, Troncoso has widened the field for all of us, writing a novel with a range and depth that is fearlessly consumed with issues of the mind. What a gutsy book!

Schupack has taught writing and literature at Vermont College, The New School, and Yale University. Her articles and short fiction have appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, Gettysburg Review, and Fiction. She lives in New York City.

Troncoso’s 1999 collection, The Last Tortilla and Other Stories, won the Premio Aztlán for the best book by a new Chicano writer, and the Southwest Book Award from the Border Regional Library Association. His stories have been featured in The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature, North of the Rio Grande, Once Upon a Cuento, Tierra Adentro: Cuentario, City Wilds: Essays and Stories about Urban Nature, and New World: Young Latino Writers. He teaches during the summer at Yale University, where he studied international relations and philosophy. Although he grew up in El Paso, TX, he now also lives in New York City. www.sergiotroncoso.com

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The readings at the HVWC are made possible in part by a grant from the Bydale Foundation; the Taft Foundation; and the Thendara Foundation; with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts; and by Westchester Arts Council with funds from Westchester County Government, corporations and individuals.

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