ThickWinter Press

They Imagine Texas is the story of six lives, two deaths and Perros Salvajes County. (Don’t look for it on a map but it’s near El Paso.) As the book says of itself on page one, They Imagine Texas is about the ways little things blow up into big ones.

The novel opens on a vacant Sunday morning. A 28-year-old teacher, Katherine Moliere, is out for a solitary run when she sees a man in a playground knock his son to the ground. Moliere, righteous in her way, intervenes. Police are called. Little things blow up into big ones for the next four years.

The man Moliere encounters is Tibor Rauscha. He is prominent in Texas politics and the wealthiest man in Perros Salvajes. When Moliere crosses his path Rauscha has recently divorced wife one and is engaged to wife two, Fanny DaCosta. Angry that her police report might queer things with Fanny, Rauscha begins keeping a paper file on Moliere. And then Fanny happens upon the file. Misunderstanding its meaning, Fanny delivers the file to Moliere—breaking into her home and into her life.

By then one death has already happened. Weeks later the second will happen.