When confronted with a stark reminder of devastating loss, reporter Jack Landon abandons all he's ever known. In Dearen's (Apache Lament, 2019) capable hands, this inauspicious beginning meanders in a direction that's both tender and tragic. Landon leaves San Angelo, Texas, in August 1917, racked with self-loathing, and arrives in a small border town called Esperanza. Although Landon expects to depart quickly, the hardscrabble lives of the villagers compel him to stay and help. He designs a levee to save the town from flash floods, reopens the local school to teach Mexican American children English, and tries to keep local teens from joining a gang of bandits. But when he learns a rogue outfit of Texas Rangers has been blackmailing Esperanza's elderly priest, Landon's stubborn bravery endangers both him and the town. Dearen ends the novel with a fictionalized retelling of the massacre in Porvenir, Texas, on January 28, 1918. Though the outcome of the massacre is heartbreaking, Dearen gently guides the reader to a hopeful ending--fitting for a town called Esperanza.