<P>... as I poured my father's ashes into a big Ziploc bag, a little of my blood drippedin. I thought about how each cell has all of you fully inscribed in it, so that if I left thosedrops in there, it would be as if I were already dead too. I plunged in then, to try and get myselfout, but it was all so sticky that I had to give up; when I pulled out my hand, parts of my fatherwere stuck all over it...--from Twin Time Witty, sarcastic, and sensuous, Twin Time: or, how deathbefell me tells the story of Mona, who, upon her father's death in Los Angeles, decides to set offin search of her long-lost twin brother, given away as an infant. With her father's ashes as a guideof dubious reliability, Mona embarks upon a quest that takes her into a forest where she'sconfronted by--among other beings--a band of Nordic men, her Chinese doppelganger, a lasciviousgiant, and a pack of feral children. Along the way Mona recounts her parents' past as she imaginesit, a romantic tale of love and rescue set in a fabulist, idealized Mexico--a dreamy place that onlyvaguely resembles the harsh quotidian realities of the 1960s Mexico City her parents inhabited. WhenMona finds her brother at last, she learns that he grew up in London with their mother--who hadsupposedly (or so Mona had been told) died in childbirth--and her parents' story is thrown intofurther disarray. By the end of the journey, all Mona's received ideas of home, motherhood, magicrealism, and miscegenation have been overturned.Veronica Gonzalez is the coeditor of Juncture: 25Very Good Stories and 12 Excellent Drawings and the founder of rockypoint Press, a series ofartist-writer collaborations produced in association with 1301PE Gallery. Twin Time is her firstnovel.</P>