The Last Karankawas

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice - An Indie Next Pick - Named a Most Anticipated and Must-Read Book by BuzzFeed, Book Riot, and Ms. Magazine - One of Washington Independent Review of Books’ Favorite Books of 2022

＂Vivid . . . Garza’s accomplished debut enriches the public imagination of this corner of America, and the communities within.＂ --Melissa Chadburn, The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)

A blazing and kaleidoscopic debut about a tight-knit community of Mexican and Filipino American families on the Texas coast from a voice you won’t soon forget.

Welcome to Galveston, Texas. Population 50,241.

Carly Castillo has only ever known Galveston. Her grandmother Magdalena claims that they descend from the Karankawas, an extinct indigenous Texan tribe, thereby tethering them to the land. Meanwhile, her boyfriend and all-star shortstop turned seaman, Jess, treasures the salty, familiar air. He’s gotten chances to leave for bigger cities, but he didn’t take them then and he sure as hell won’t now. When word spreads of a storm gathering strength offshore known as Hurricane Ike, each Galveston resident must make a difficult decision: board up the windows and hunker down or flee inland and abandon their hard-won homes.

Moving through the extraordinary lives of these characters and the many individuals who circle them, The Last Karankawas weaves together a multitude of voices to present a lyrical, emotionally charged portrait of everyday survival. The result is an unforgettable exploration of familial inheritance, human resilience, and the histories we assign to ourselves.

Kimberly Garza is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and the University of North Texas, where she earned a PhD in 2019. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Copper Nickel, DIAGRAM, Creative Nonfiction, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. A native Texan--born in Galveston, raised in Uvalde--she is an assistant professor of creative writing and literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio. The Last Karankawas is her first novel.