Sketches from the Spanish Mustang — Benjamin X. Wretlind

Haley Spencer sits at a table in a casino in Cripple Creek, Colorado. She is broken, alone, and she is waiting. She's waiting for redemption, waiting for a chance to prove she can really see through someone else's eyes. And as she waits, she sketches those around her, those who keep their secrets buried deep. It's not simply something she wants to do; it's something she has to do, and it might just save a life. While all people have secrets, Haley quickly learns that some of them are every bit as dark as her own. There is the immigrant looking for fortune and finding death along the way. There is the woman running for her life, desperate to hide in a small town that is, for its own sake, trying to live again. There is the angry man, jilted by his now-dead wife, looking for revenge. There is the veteran who can't remember, the woman about to lose her mother, and the drunk who doesn't want to be what people see on the outside. There are more people, everywhere, behind every turn of the card, and all of them have secrets. Sketches from the Spanish Mustang weaves each person's story--both intriguing and magical--into a single narrative of love, death, penance, and peace. As the mystery of each sketch unfolds, the lives of Haley's subjects unravel. This is her gift: to uncover the hidden in life. Yet gifts can be curses, and curses can be secrets. Through the eyes of a woman forced to spend her life attempting to correct her own misguided view of those around her, the reader is given an opportunity to see more than the vagrant, more than the alcoholic, more than the immigrant or the woman running from her past. The novel breaks down stereotypes and allows the reader to peer into the eyes of the people we all turn away. Remembering is penance.