Loosely based on the little-known 1859 Mexican invasion of the United States, Carmen Boullosa's newest novel, Texas: The Great Theft, is a richly imagined evocation of the volatile Tex-Mex borderland, wrested from Mexico in 1848. Described by Roberto Bolaño as "Mexico's greatest woman writer," Boullosa views the border history through distinctly Mexican eyes, and her sympathetic portrayal each of her wildly diverse characters — Mexican ranchers and Texas Rangers, Comanches and cowboys, German socialists and runaway slaves, Southern belles and dance hall girls — makes her storytelling tremendously powerful and absorbing.