Breaking Even

By Alejandro Grattan-Dominguez

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1558852131
• ISBN13: 9781558852136
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Arte Publico Pr
• Length: 254 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.5" x 5.5"
• Age Range: 14 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 9 and higher

Customer Reviews

Important Lesson In Life, For Kids And Single Parents

I'm fifteen-years-old. My parents got divorced when I was eleven. I come from three generations of divorced parents. I wondered what the problem was with me, that I couldn't be with my dad. Then I read Alejandro Grattan Dominguez's book "Breaking Even", which was great, and I looked at the situation a lot differently. I related to Val through most of the book. It made me feel better that it's okay to live without my dad. My dad lives in Phoenix right now and he is giving my mom and I problems that I'm not living with him. I'm not losing anything at all by not having my dad around. I'm having a good life without him. He is the one missing out. So to me, he is a jerk like Frank Cooper in the book. I really got into the book when Val just walked out on his dad, because that is similar to what I did, and when I did, I felt bad, but inside, I actually didn't. Now that I have read this book, I feel a lot better and it taught me some things. For instance, how Val left Big Bend, Texas, I left Dover, Delaware. That is where I grew up until I was seven-years-old when we started traveling. My family in Delaware thinks it's so bad that my brother and I travel. I have fun with my gymnastics, traveling everywhere and seeing interesting things outside of where I grew up. But instead, my family is back in Delaware thinking they're having fun in their toxic waste State. My situation is similar to Val's family and friends. They didn't want him to go search for his dad or work at his goal to go to California, but it's a lot better than staying in one place all your life. Plus, it's educational to see all the States and different cultures. My opinion is that "Breaking Even" should be read in all High Schools in the Country because about seventy percent of kids in the U.S. only have one parent. I'm telling all my friends to read it. We're all miserable because of our parent's selfishness. It will help them like it helped me.

A captivating story of a youth in search of a dream.

This heart-warming and enticing story grabbed my full attention. I could hardly put it down. I was captivated by the plot and Val's dedicated search for his father and the challenges that he faced on his journey. Each character contributed to the excitement and the intrigue. I highly recommend this book.

"Fine storytelling" - The Multicultural Review

This is a coming-of-age story set in the 1950s. Val, an 18-year-old Mexican-American, works in his Mexican mother's cafe, lives for the movies, and dreams about leaving the small West Texas town where he has lived all his life. Having grown up thinking that his Anglo father was dead, he is shocked to learn that he is alive,and there begins the real story. It is Val's search not only for his father, Cooper (who looks to Val like a Hollywood movie star and is actually a professional high-stakes gambler), but also for his own identity and roots as a Mexican-American man. Team the father and son characters Cooper and Val with Ms. Blue Morgan, a kind-hearted, aging paid companion from Reno, and the story becomes even more deliciously colorful and complicated. A poker game brings these three together in El Paso for their initial meeting, and it leads to a bigger poker game in Reno and the adventure of their lives. They are all coincidentally at turning points and must decide on new courses for their lives. This is more than a coming-of-age story; it is one of coming to terms with one's life and taking responsibility for that life. It is a story of hard questions and decisions. Ultimately, it is a story of liberation from past circumstances and the pursuit of destiny.Grattan-Dominguez is a fine storyteller with a good sense of dialogue. His portrayals of character and of the authentic Southwest are sure to earn him a growing reputation as a writer.

Self discovery, coming of age in a chicano-Huck Finn odyssey

Breaking Even by Alejandro Grattan-Domínguez (Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1997) 254 pp. $11.95Those readers who have experienced the richness of the Chicano culture and life in Grattan1s The Dark Side of the Dream already know the power of this author in painting complex and believable characters. In that novel, set against the backdrop of World War II we saw the compelling struggle of a people finding their own identity in a world shattered by the forces of alienation and dispersion. Masterfully narrated and brilliantly conceived, the book marked the ascent of a new literary figure in Chicano literature. In Search of Self Grattan1s latest novel is set in the 1950s when his 18-year-old protagonist, Val, abandons the security of his West Texas town, a loving mother, a kind stepfather, and a girlfriend to go in search of his natural father whom Val thought had died years earlier. Val has several things going for him. He1s a fullback on his high school football team and his girlfriend is the daughter of the richest man in town. Nevertheless, as the son of a Mexican mother and an absent Anglo father, he rates rather low on the social scale. Then, on his birthday, he comes into an inheritance left him by his father, which gives him the opportunity to both marry his sweetheart and go to college. Soon thereafter, however, he learns that his father did not die, but rather deserted him and his Mexican mother. Val decides to use his legacy to go on a quest to find his father, despite active discouragement from his mother. Thus begins an odyssey which, like that of Huck Finn down the Mississippi River, is one of self-discovery, rollicking action and graphic scenes of violence which kept this reader engrossed. For what Val discovers as he finds his father Ða compulsive gambler who is traveling with a female consortÐ is a man who sometimes resembles the foolishly romantic Tom Sawyer, and at other times the nefarious Duke. Always a dreamer and often a rogue, Val1s father, Frank Cooper, is charming, articulate, courageous and feckless. His efforts to put together a stake to get into the poker game of a lifetime continuously puts at risk his own life, as well as that of his two companions. Occasionally brilliant, warm-hearted and outgoing, Frank Cooper always has his eye on the main chance. For Val, these qualities at first seem to make understandable why Val1s mother still dreams of him and hopes he might someday return to her. To Val, Cooper is the man who generously left her with enough money to buy the roadside diner that has provided her and Val with a livelihood for the past eighteen years. Hence, like Pip in Great Expectations, Val is deceived at first by appearances. He compares Cooper with his bleary-eyed, dyspeptic stepfather, Floyd, who works as a cook in the diner. It is obvious to Val which is the better man, and no surprise that his mother has carried a torch for Cooper all these years. Coming of Age As time

Major competitor to coming-of-age classics (Catcher in Rye)

One week moves this author's hero, along with other hopelessly addicted but compelling characters from Breaking Even's outset to a proper if unpredictable conclusion. Ends are nicely tied for such a complex character set, and yet I was left wishing for more-- the perfect opportunity for a sequel, or at least another Grattan-Dominguez book.Young Val, his parents and friends are set in the American West in 1955, but don't lean on the historic period for support. Each is carefully drawn with timeless inner dilemnas which could occur anywhere, anytime. Specific reliance on gambling, movie-making and small-town life fit geographically with the West Texas setting, but are common and comfortable to this Baby Boomer searching for courageous characters who struggle deeply without whining all the time.My second reading of Breaking Even was prompted partially by the parting shot of the Kirkus Review you publish above. Somebody missed the mark on that one.