The Last Karankawas by Kimberly Garza

 

Galveston, Texas, is an island and port city of around fifty thousand.  While many of those there are tourists, the residents tend to be Filipino and Mexican.  There is a community where these residents tend to live called Fish Village.  Many of the residents work fishing or nursing or service jobs.  Some believe they are descended from the Karankawas, the Native American tribe that settled the area and lived there.

This novel is a set of interlaced stories about the residents of Fish Village at the time that Hurricane Ike was approaching.  Set on the Gulf Coast, Galveston is a prime target.  Each resident has to decide if they will stay and try to ride out the storm or evacuate. 

Not all the residents are Filipino or Mexican.  One character is a man who came there after he returns from an overseas tour in the military.  He is not ready to take up his life before war again and finds work on the fishing boats.  Carly is perhaps the main character, a girl in her teens who wants to get out of Galveston but also feels the pull of the only home she knows.  Her grandmother insists that they are descended from the Karankawa tribe.  Carly's boyfriend is Jess, who is a star shortstop and may get a college scholarship to play at that level but in the meantime he fishes.  There are two Filipino cousins who are both nurses.  One gets a work visa and comes to Galveston.  When he disappears, his Filipino cousin comes undocumented to search for him. 

Kimberly Garza is a native Texan who was born and raised in Galveston and her familiarity with the locale is evident.  This is her debut novel and I really enjoyed reading about the region and thought her method of mixing the stories of various residents of Fish Village was an effective one.  I listened to this novel and the narrator did an excellent job.  The Karankawa Native Americans were a tribe that was new to me and I enjoyed the bits of their history that were given in the novel.  Carly was probably my favorite character as I can relate to the thought of growing up somewhere you want to leave for the bigger world yet the ties to that place want to keep you there.  This book is recommended for multicultural and literary fiction readers.