Antonio Sonoro’s family has fallen on hard times. Though his namesake grandfather was an incredibly rich and powerful mine owner, the family fortune was destroyed by his greed and cruelty, to the extent that Antonio lives on dirt farm with his wife and two children, living near starvation due to prolonged drought. Antonio has turned to banditry as a more lucrative profession, though he curiously tends to give a lot of his ill-gotten goods away before they make it home. But now, in extremis, Antonio has decided to go for the biggest score of his career. Along with his adopted brother Hugo, he sets out for Texas to rob a train packed with gold, jewelry and luxury goods.
Seventy years later, Antonio’s grandson Jaime is a Mexican film star, entirely unfamiliar with his family history until a strange manuscript is delivered to his front door. It’s a curious family history dating back to the family’s days in Spain. The book details the Sonoro clan’s revolving history of rise and decline, defined by greed and hubris. Jaime’s father warns his son to get rid of the book, but Jaime finds it impossible, becoming enrapt with the story even as he feels it slowly starting to change his personality.
Connecting Antonio and Jaime is Remedio, a mysterious, mystical being who seems akin to the figure of Death. Assigned to take young Antonio shortly after his birth, Remedio refuses, thereby becoming intensely interested in the impact Antonio’s life has on others and the consequences of letting him live. Remedio travels back and forth between the two men, time being meaningless to him.
After Antonio’s robbery goes south, he finds himself on the run from the Texas Rangers. The Rangers are crazed and bloodthirsty, willing to go to shocking extremes to catch their man. As the death toll rises, Antonio sets forth on a course for vengeance of his own. Decades later, Jaime learns a partial story of his exploits and decides they would make a great movie role for himself.
The first chapter of the novel, covering the days of the elder Antonio’s rise and fall, was absolutely brilliant. I was thrilled, and sure that I was in the midst of a classic. But Gonzalez James quickly squanders the momentum. Neither Antonio the bandit nor Jaime the actor are halfway as compelling, and Remedio’s involvement in both stories is a rather pointless literary device.
The purpose of the novel remained inexplicable to me until the author’s afterword, in which she revealed that The Bullet Swallower is very loosely based on some of her actual family’s lore. That may make this a meaningful story to her, but it remains unclear why the reader is supposed to care or be entertained.