Jared Lemus’s Guatemalan Rhapsody gathers a disparate ensemble of dreamers and bootstrappers, those who toe both sides of the law, and those who are bound by tenaciousness when life gets bleak. These are characters who scrimp and scavenge, put their hearts on a perch and love hard. Lemus’s stories are written with tenderness and lithe prose intertwined with humor that never undercuts the very real dangers the characters face—whether they are putting their lives on the line for a highway robbery or sacrificing themselves to an altar of fire. The details of place and circumstance ground the reader in every tale and have you rooting for the characters to succeed. Rare is the debut that arrives fully rendered and delivers a writer whose voice and talent promise even greater things to come.