You know that you're in for it when a book opens with a description of mortuary students sipping coffee at the local community college while the protagonist, a Mexican-American college dropout, considers what promising careers they have ahead of them.

I knew the mortuary students would get good jobs because my cousin had died recently and my father and two uncles were dead, all of them now with arms like the arms of praying mantises, crooked and thin as whispers. My best friend from high school was also dead, his head having been caught like bulk laundry in the giant rollers of a steel foundry. It was his first good job, and his last.

That swoosh you may have just heard was the sound of yourself falling into the world of nineteen year old Eddie, a kid who hopes to get a job, to walk a straight line, and to somehow avoid the fate of his cousin, Jesús, who was recently stabbed to death in a club and died in the arms of Angel, his carnal (blood brother).

Eddie lives in innercity Fresno, a place where the only things more oppressive than the summer heat are the omnipresent forces of violence, hunger and poverty that threaten to smother him. In high school, Eddie got into his share of fights, and sniffed glue with his friends Lupe, Angel, and his primo Jesús. Now, graduated and on his own, he attempts to pull his life together. He finds work painting house numbers on curbs and doing a bit of landscaping work, but his new-found straight path is swept out from under him when his employer, Mr. Stiles, lends him a truck to haul trash to the dump. The truck is stolen when Eddie stops at home to change his t-shirt. Eddie is too scared to attempt to explain the situation to Mr. Stiles.

Meanwhile, Jesús' mother begs Eddie to kill the guy who stabbed Jesús. She phones him constantly and brings him gifts of tortillas. One day, instead of tortillas wrapped in her basket, she brings Eddie a gun. When he refuses it, she gives it to Angel, who seems eager to ice the kid who stabbed his carnal.

The story takes a turn when Norma, a high school friend, tells Eddie that Angel was actually the one who stabbed Jesús. Eddie is confused, enraged, and scared out of his mind that Angel-- ruthless, dangerous, and now armed with a gun-- will come after him next.

This is a heavy novel. The violence and desperation of Eddie and his friends settles over the reader with the same oppressiveness as the summer heat that permeates author Gary Soto's depiction of innercity Fresno. As the action accelerates and the level of violence increases, we are swept along with Eddie as his life careens uncontrollably off the straight and narrow and into anger, fear, and blood. The entire novel is steeped in a sort of dark inevitability as it becomes clear that no matter what Eddie does, he will be overcome if he remains in Fresno.

Gary Soto is a poet, and Buried Onions is true to its author's foundations. The prose is as grim and as bleak as Eddie's life, but beautiful for its authenticity. Soto evokes powerful imagery throughout the novel, not the least of which is Eddie's fantasy that the vapors that rise from the asphalt of the city are rising from buried onions, and that those are the source of the city dwellers' tears.

Soto's characters are believable and range from lovable to despicable. Eddie, the protagonist, is a wonderfully well-written character. We like him. Eddie wants to be good. He wants to be peaceful. He wants to let God sort the world out and instead put his efforts into surviving and living a clean life. However, as the novel progresses, we see more and more of his flaws: a temper that can rage out of control, and a deep-rooted fear that causes him to run from the things that could help him. José, a Marine who comes home on leave only to be dragged into trouble by his old friends, is another highly sympathetic character. Angel, who is anything but an angel, is unpredictable and frightening-- a character that is likely to explode at any moment, and who makes the reader cringe whenever he appears. None of the female characters come alive as well as these male characters, but that is probably to be expected, since this is a book about boys becoming men, or at the very least trying to live long enough to become men.

Buried Onions earns high marks from me. It is thankfully short, since once you begin this finely crafted tale, you will want to complete it in one sitting. Just make certain that you've taken all of your anti-depressants.

Recommended: Yes