A Desert Between Two Seas: A Novel in Stories

by Erin Dunigan

There is a specific kind of silence in Baja. It’s not the absence of sound, but a heavy, geological patience. For anyone who has spent time on the peninsula, you know it isn’t just a destination - it’s a living, breathing character.

Author A. Muia knows this better than most. She spent nearly two decades on research trips along the Baja Peninsula developing her debut, A Desert Between Two Seas: A Novel in Stories, which recently won the prestigious Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. It is a work that doesn't just describe Baja; it lets the land speak for itself.

From Santa Barbara to the Frontera

Muia’s fascination with the Spanish missions began in her childhood in Santa Barbara. While she admired the architecture, she felt the "heaviness" of the history - the impact on the native people. She wanted to explore that further, but found it difficult in the modern, tourist-clogged missions of California.

Then, in 2006, a trip to interpret Spanish for dentists at an orphanage led her to Baja. She realized they were not far from the mission of Santo Domingo de la Frontera. "We didn’t know how to get there, but we bumped across the arroyo and we found it.” Seeing that small, crumbling ruin was the spark. "My imagination was captured. I could picture it and what it was like back in the 18th century."

Though she knew the mission chain stretched the entire length of the peninsula, she realized that much of the Baja story remained hidden from the American consciousness.

The Landscape as Character

For Muia, the setting of the book - the old missions, the boulder fields of Cataviña, the mining history of Santa Rosalia, the prison without doors in Mulegé - is not mere backdrop.

"The landscape becomes a character," she explains. "It has agency; it interacts with the characters, and they interact with it."

To get it right, she didn’t just rely on history books - she went to see for herself. One memorable trip was with a friend who is a biologist and herpetologist (snake scientist), a partnership that blended a rigorous scientific eye with her own poetic sensibility. "He was able to show me things that I would have never noticed," she recalls. "What is native and what is introduced, the geology of the land forms... I would take the facts that he was showing me and add my own poetic eye.”

The result is a book where the terrain shapes the narrative. Take, for instance, the prison in Mulegé, where prisoners were allowed to roam town by day, only to return at the sound of a conch shell at night. It sounds like folklore, but it’s history. It worked because the land itself was the jailer. If you tried to escape into the unforgiving, inhospitable desert, you might not make it.

A Legacy of Guilt and Grace

At the heart of the book are two central figures: a priest who, burdened by guilt over a native boy he pushed to hunt for pearls, wants to flee his vocation; and Dolores, a woman born without ears who finds herself, through a moment of violence, transformed into a pistolera.

Muia, who spent 14 years as a chaplain in a county jail and now runs recovery homes, brings a deep, human perspective to these characters. "The people that we work with, and humans in general, have a hard time seeing love. It comes, and we can’t see it or recognize it, and we often push it away."

This is the hidden current in A Desert Between Two Seas. Despite the weight of history and the "crumbling" nature of the missions, the book isn't about despair. It is about the "moment of grace." Muia’s characters are people who have made mistakes they feel are unforgivable. Yet, within every chapter, there is a flicker of light - a reminder that redemption isn't a grand, sweeping gesture, but something found in the smallest, most quiet moments of humanity.

A "Novel in Stories"

The path to publishing was its own journey. Muia initially tried to write a standard novel, but it didn't click. A friend suggested she try short stories, a form she admits she was initially hesitant about. But once she turned her first chapter into a stand-alone piece, she fell in love with the weight the short story form carries.

She eventually wove these pieces together into a "novel in stories," a structure that forces the reader to pause. "I have had people tell me that they have had to slow down. I think it is really true. You almost have to read one story and then set it aside for a moment.”

Returning to the Source

Recently, Muia returned to Baja to read from her book in some of the very places that inspired it, including Mulegé. "How would it be to read some of the stories in the place where they actually happened?" she wondered. "I think I underestimated how moving that would be for me."

When she read in Mulegé she worried she might be telling people things they already knew. Instead, she found a powerful connection. She was giving voice to the experience of the land, providing a new way for people to see the places they called home.

For the Baja Bound traveler, reading this book might change how you look at the next arroyo or ruin you pass on your way down the Transpeninsular Highway. You might see the "living, breathing" history that Muia describes.

"Every time a reader reads it, something new is created," Muia says. "Because it is really a partnership between me, the author putting things on a page, and the reader bringing the whole of themselves to the work."

Whether you are a seasoned Baja traveler or someone dreaming of your first trip down the peninsula, A Desert Between Two Seas is a companion worth having. It is a reminder that in Baja, as in life, the most important things - the pearls, the grace, the history - are often found in the places we least expect to look.

To learn more about A. Muia and order a copy of A Desert Between Two Seas, visit her website. Books are also available on Amazon and Village Books.