Backlands

March 1, 2015
Shorr's debut novel is a fictionalized rendering of the interior lives of real-life 20th-century Brazilian folk heroes Lampiao and Maria Bonita as they meet, fall in love, and travel the countryside with their gang of outlaws. Although he only began living outside the law in order to track down those responsible for the murder of his father, Lampiao quickly becomes legendary for repeatedly escaping the authorities, engendering the loyalty of fellow outlaws and the awe of his countrymen. Sixteen-year-old Maria Bonita grows up hearing of his exploits but has no connection to Lampiao when she's married to an elderly shoemaker by her father in an attempt to find her a steady source of food and housing in a severe drought. For six years, she sweeps the shoemaker's dirt floor and sleeps chastely in a hammock, more maid than wife. One day, Lampiao's gang comes to the shoemaker's house with gun belts, sandals, bridles and other accessories that will take several days to mend. Lampiao notices Maria's beauty, and Maria hears Lampiao sing a song that says, "You teach me to make lace, and I'll teach you to make love." Her decision to leave the shoemaker and join Lampiao for some lovemaking lessons is easy; but her decision to leave behind safety for perpetual uncertainty is much harder. Shorr writes with a dreamy, fatalistic lyricism: "Like a map of her life with Lampiao, all the crossings and journeys, the battles and hideouts, she could see it all there, in the light of her eyes," Maria thinks while looking in a mirror. The knowledge of Maria and Lampiao's inevitable end gives the work a contemplative air, in which the irresistible pull of love and the resulting travails and triumphs of living dangerously are elevated to a poetic ideal. More long-form ode than rigorously plotted page-turner, Shorr's lyrical exploration of these Brazilian folk heroes is as much a study of love as of the shifting emotional terrain of an entire country.

May 1, 2015

In the harsh landscape of the northeastern Brazillian frontier--the Sertao, the backlands--years of drought make families desperate and long-simmering feuds often turn fatal. Justice is only for the wealthy and well connected, but a group of outlaws, led by the one-eyed Lampiao and his companion Maria Bonita, travel the Sertao, stealing from the rich and avenging deaths and injustices. Lampiao and his bandits are feared by the police but seen as heroes by the local ranchers and cowboys. As the culture and the land change rapidly around them, the outlaws find themselves also resisting the forces of modernization. The government's actions to improve the lives of the poor make these indigenous rebels increasingly irrelevant to those whose cause they champion. VERDICT Debut author Shorr, who spent ten years researching this story and living in Brazil, imagines a rich inner life for Brazilian folk heroes Lampiao (1897-1938) and Maria Bonita (1911-38). Their brief afternoon of courtship, their years passionately in love, and their final showdown with the police are realized in quiet prose. Less an action novel and more a character study, this is a poignant meditation on life, love, loyalty, and death in an unforgiving land.--Sarah Cohn, Manhattan Coll. Lib., Bronx, NY

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 15, 2015
The backlandsBrazil's thorny, drought-afflicted, poverty-stricken, feud-riddled interiorlong provided sanctuary for rebels, mystics, and outlaws. Shorr's entrancing first novel, a work of lithe and penetrating historical fiction, portrays the legendary backlands bandit leader, Lampiao, and his courageous lover, Maria Bonita. Beautiful Maria is forced into marriage to an old shoemaker, who barely speaks and never touches her. Like a heroine in a fairy tale, she is rescued from this spell of neglect by a dashing prince, leather-swathed, long-haired, bejeweled Lampiao. A man of mysterious powers, who is feared and worshiped, protected and hunted, Lampiao has eluded capture for many years because of his profound knowledge of and deep reverence for the land. But as the 1930s roll on, his untamed world undergoes threatening changes, from new roads to the ambitions of a fascist president. Shorr tells the renegade couple's riveting story of love and violence from multiple points of view, including that of a police officer on their trail. Intensely attuned to the glory and danger of the backlands and to the terror, valor, and spirituality of Lampiao's reign, Shorr astutely and lyrically illuminates the mythological, psychological, and social dimensions of the bandit lovers' lives, portraying them both as poignantly complex and besieged individuals and archetypal warriors ardently defending wildness in all its embodiments.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)