The writing life is one focus for Francisco X. Stork in his recent novel One Last Chance to Live. It tells the story of Nico Kardos who wishes to be a great writer. However, Stork’s book is also a murder mystery that explores the purpose of life.
Seventeen-year-old Nico is finishing his senior year at Stonebridge Charter School in Hunts Point, New York, and his writing teacher Mr. Cortazar has assigned the class the task of writing 500 words per day in their journals. The practice is intended to teach self-knowledge, which “will make you a better person and a better writer” (18), according to Mr. Cortazar, who is like a magnet for deep secrets. It is this magnetism that gets Nico wondering whether Mr. Cortazar knows something about Rosario’s last days of life. After all, she was a writer like Nico, as well as Mr. Cortazar’s former student. Mr. Cortazar must have read something in Rosario’s journal, even though he says he doesn’t read their words, that hinted at when or why her life began to unravel until the point where her body was found in the Stardust Motel in Queens. The cause of death, according to the police report, was an accidental drug overdose. Was Rosario unhinged and resigned to death or was she the victim of foul play?
Nico’s sleuthing forms the core of the novel’s plot, but Stork carefully weaves in other threads and characters to keep the story intriguing. There’s Javier Rojas, Nico’s half-brother, who already at age twelve is on track to join the gang life with the X-Tecas. Then, there’s Alma Zamora, Rosario’s sister, who serves as Nico’s confidante and is secretly in love with him. Even, Ruth Silvester, Nico’s fantasy writer classmate who writes with the imagination and precision that Nico yearns to imitate, adds her flair to the plot when she shows up as a character in Nico’s dream. Not only does she tell Nico to honor the gifts he has been given but helps him to interpret his dream.
As Nico’s journal entries continue to tell the story of his thoughts about life and its “dirty dishes” that we all seek to escape, readers also learn that writers and artists tend to live dissatisfied lives. Nico recalls Rosario’s words on the topic: “No matter what we have, we think there’s something better out there . . . . It’s a hunger. And an arrogance. . . . Deep down we think we’re better. We feel more. See more. We’re unhappy more. Deep down there’s this feeling that no one’s like us” (144). Given this potential side effect of creativity, artists need people to keep them grounded, someone to remind them that they are not just special and gifted but also ordinary.
Furthermore, because this is a novel about the writing life, Stork tucks in other tidbits of wisdom, like this gem: “I’ve been thinking all day that beauty is not something you have before you start writing. It’s more like a thing you search for, desperately, in the act of writing” (101).
And because we’re not all writers, Stork knows that “everyone’s addicted to something. Everyone’s looking for a high one way or another” (164). Whether it is the desire to be accepted, famous, or seen as special, we all have a hankering, a dream or a desire that we’re chasing. We all grow up missing something and seek to fill that emptiness in different ways. Along the way, we make promises, but lies have a shelf life, and Nico is forced to decide whether the words I promise mean something precious or whether they are just words.
- Donna