A fearsome Russian soldier, tragic European contact, and a naive college student reveal a hidden history of the U.S.-Mexico border region, the fictional frontier wherein sex, crime, and cultural change play out. Based on Mr. Torrans' personal scholarship, these three short novels, each set in its own historical time period spanning from the age of exploration to the modern era, are cultural histories, told through fiction. Because, sometimes fiction is the only means of getting at the truth of things.