Nine stories dealing with U.S.-Mexico relations. In the title story, a Mexican window washer meets an American executive, Girlfriends is about a Mexican maid and her racist Anglo employer, and Rio Grande, Rio Bravo is on border crossings.

Description: 266 p. ; 22 cm.
Contents: A capital girl --
Pain --
Spoils --
The line of oblivion --
Malintzin of the maquilas --
Las amigas --
The crystal frontier --
The bet --
Río Grande, Río Bravo.
Other Titles: Capital girl.
Line of oblivion.
Amigas.
Crystal frontier.
Bet.
Frontera de cristal.
Responsibility: Carlos Fuentes ; translated from the Spanish by Alfred Mac Adam.
Abstract:

The nine stories comprising this novel all concern people who in one way or another have had something to do with, or still are part of, the family of a powerful oligarch of northern Mexico with manifold connections to the United States. Each story concerns a Mexican-American encounter--sometimes hilarious, often tragic, frequently ambivalent, inevitably poignant--and each unique drama in its own way epitomizes some striking contrast along the invisible, reflective, dangerous frontier that divides the American-Mexican world. Beyond the emblematic power of Mr. Fuentes's exuberant fiction to make us think about the political and cultural themes which affect and distort that double world, there is the sheer human diversity of life on "crystal frontier." These stories pulse with vivid experience--of love in its many guises, of loneliness, of youth and age, of heartbreak and redemption.--From publisher description.