This powerful and moving debut novel paints a bittersweet portrait of a community’s struggles against forces that threaten to destroy it and also the dreams–and, sometimes, the lives–of its residents. Equally compelling are the stories of individuals involved in or affected by these struggles. Sometimes, they are left to rely on little more than their own resilience and, against all odds, a sense of hope.

Described as “prose snapshots,” each of the stories in this evocative, wide-ranging collection captures significant or telling moments, encounters, or observations in 50 words or fewer. Together, they add up to something far greater than the sum of their parts, creating a rich, layered portrait of the human experience.

In this imaginative collection of linked stories, “the borderlands” seem to refer not only to the territory along the U.S.-Mexico border–a landscape traversed by the central character, Jillian Guzmán, and her family–but also to metaphysical boundaries that are magically porous to Jillian: between life and death and between the material and spiritual worlds. Collectively, her experiences in these dimensions create a portrait of deep empathy, and of the powers of hope and redemption, even amid suffering.

When I finished Nick Kolakowski’s riveting thriller Boise Longpig Hunting Club, I was eager for a sequel. Over the course of that novel, the central characters–bounty hunter Jake Halligan, his gun-running sister, Frankie, and Jake’s fiancée, Janine–became prey in a “Most Dangerous Game”-style hunt orchestrated by a corrupt and powerful billionaire, Ted Baker, who’d blamed the death of his coke-dealing brother on Jake and Frankie’s late father, a former deputy. Though the trio ended up slaughtering their way to freedom, one thing seemed clear by the novel’s conclusion: When you kill a man like Baker, along with his rich and influential fellow hunters, there are bound to be consequences.

Fortunately for readers like me, Kolakowski just released Rattlesnake Rodeo, a gripping sequel that unleashes these consequences with force, pushing Jake and Frankie into uncomfortable new territory, physically and morally.

In the simplest sense, Rage is a Wolf portrays one young woman’s quest to make a difference in the world and to find meaning in her life, outside of the boundaries of high school. But much to this credit of this imaginative and inspiring novel, her quest is nothing but simple, and it leads to transformative discoveries about herself and the world.

In this inventive and affecting novel, the barriers between the real world and the worlds of the imagination, magic, and folklore become porous at best and sometimes dissolve altogether. As disorienting as these breaks with reality are for the couple at the center of the story, Adrian Dussett and Ben Hughes, they ultimately prove revelatory, pushing Adrian and Ben to confront personal difficulties that have troubled them for years and created a divide in their relationship.