Spanning three generations and the interconnected lives of multiple characters, The Door-Man is an inventive and revelatory novel. At the heart of it are two possibly unbridgeable gaps: between the central character’s fragmented understanding of his family’s history and the truth, and between an ancestral cycle of tragedy and a potentially hopeful future.

When it comes to seemingly impossible capabilities, two of the most wished-for ones must be time travel and the ability to meet notable figures from the past. In this engrossing novel, both of these wishes become a reality, delivering profound rewards and significant dangers, some of which could reverberate across time. The result is a gripping and thought-provoking read.

In this moving and perceptive collection of linked stories, characters are at uncertain and unsettled times of their lives–perhaps, in an unsatisfying relationship or situation that they can’t quite bring themselves to leave, or in a liminal space between their life as it is (or was) and what it might potentially be. Although the characters rarely find clear answers or resolutions, they make profound discoveries about themselves, and about life.

I’m grateful to Raven Chronicles Press for bringing this extraordinary historical novel, originally published in 1997, back into print. Set in nineteenth-century Mexico, the book is revelatory and inspiring on many levels. For one thing, it sheds light on the lives and struggles of Mexican Jews, who practiced their religion in secret for fear of persecution. For another, it immerses us in the lives of women who do the opposite of existing in the shadows, as many of their counterparts would have been forced to do at the time.

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.

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.