02/26/2024
Martinez’s immersive debut chronicles his tumultuous early life and the bond he shared with his late younger brother, Mike. The boys’ family moved often across the U.S., Brazil, and Puerto Rico, before settling in a small Idaho Mormon community, where their mixed-race household stood out—their mother was half Black, half Indigenous; their father was white and adopted by Mexican parents who raised him Mormon. Early on, the brothers learned to avoid or repress discomfort: when Martinez was caught “playing doctor” with a neighbor girl, his father told him he was “making Jesus cry”; when he and Mike began to sustain cuts and broken bones from skateboarding, they hid their wounds to avoid a fuss. “Fear ruled our household,” Martinez recalls. “Fear of mistakes, fear of anger, fear of god.... Fear of letting others down.” By the time the boys entered middle school, both began using drugs as an escape from the severity and coldness of their home life. In late adolescence, their paths split: Martinez attended various colleges and embarked on a mission to Brazil, while Mike’s opiate use worsened and he became homeless. Then, in 2021, after Martinez began writing the memoir, Mike died of sepsis in prison, and Martinez resolved to confront through therapy the lifelong saudade (Portuguese for a “feeling of absence”) that plagued both brothers. The author revitalizes well-worn themes of racism, addiction, and religious trauma with his sense of urgency and vivid language. This marks Martinez a writer to watch. Agent: Mariah Stovall, Trellis Literary. (Apr.)
Immersive . . . [Martinez’s debut] revitalizes well-worn themes of racism, addiction, and religious trauma with his sense of urgency and vivid language. This marks [him as] a writer to watch.” ―Publishers Weekly
“Arresting . . . Martinez holds nothing back when writing about his upbringing as a multiracial Mormon in Idaho, family dysfunction, living with addiction, and surviving complicated losses—but the heart of this book is found in his defining relationship with his brother, and what it means to share your life and your wounds with someone you ultimately cannot save.”
―Nicole Chung, Esquire
“Searing . . . a story that needs to be shared.”
―Adam Vitcavage, Debutiful
"Martinez’s love for [his brother] is woven throughout this book, as he writes evocatively about the joys and pains of their shared lives and divergent paths as adults. Readers will connect with Martinez’s honest and revelatory writing.”
―Laura Chanoux, Booklist
"Bones Worth Breaking is a wise, vulnerable and moving elegy for a best friend and soulmate who just happens to be family. It is also a kaleidoscopic coming-of-age memoir whose power lies in its gentle refusal of identity essentialism and narrative authority, operating instead through attitudes of hesitance, searching, restlessness, and deep compassion. This is an unforgettable story."
—Chantal V. Johnson, author of Post-Traumatic
"A deeply moving and courageous story of brotherly love. In this most intimate and soul-baring of memoirs, David Martinez describes not one, but many unforgettable odysseys through addiction and migration, identity and faith."
—Héctor Tobar, author of Our Migrant Souls
"In this heart-felt depiction of the lives of two brothers who end up taking different life paths—one that leads to redemption and the other to a tragic end—David Martinez reminds us of the danger that comes with hiding our wounds. Beautiful and deeply moving, Bones Worth Breaking is a book worth reading."
—Obed Silva, author of The Death of My Father the Pope
"Written with uncanny grit and beauty, Bones Worth Breaking is as much a personal revelation as it is an American reckoning. Martinez's prose at times left me breathless."
—Liska Jacobs, author of The Pink Hotel
★ 02/01/2024
Martinez's first book is a raw, gritty, and powerfully honest memoir of the life of two brothers, lived in the liminal spaces of family, school, religion, race, and nationality. It opens with stomach-churning detail about the author's childhood injuries, especially the broken bones and untreated gashes accrued as he and his younger brother, Mike, pushed themselves skateboarding. These scenes become vivid metaphors for the pain and challenges the brothers would experience as they are shaped by family dysfunction, the expectations of their Mormon religion, and systemic racism as Black and Brazilian American people. One of the brothers has a substance-use disorder, while the other tries to improve his own mental health. The narrative moves back and forth through time, letting readers know early on that Mike has died. Martinez slowly fills in the pieces of his story in an engrossing way. The details are often heavy when they come, and Martinez excels at visceral and emotionally aware descriptions. VERDICT This memoir is a poignant portrait of the love between two brothers and a shared life, with descriptions of traumatic experiences and the resulting scars. The relevance of the book's themes and topics, alongside Martinez's openness and exceptional writing skill, will undoubtedly connect with many readers.—Zachariah Motts
2024-01-18
A memoir of death, addiction, family history, and recovery.
“Drugs were what I knew before the mission, and drugs were what I went back to,” writes Martinez of an interlude that found him proselytizing for his Mormon faith in Brazil. The drugs are constant throughout this often repetitive memoir, which has an MFA workshop feel to it, if grittier than most: There’s heroin, cocaine, and every other sort of mind-altering substance, consumed against a bookish backdrop that finds the author writing while using: “My dreams had merged—my love of books and my need for drugs—or the dream and nightmare were fighting one another.” His younger brother was less fortunate: Though intelligent and observant, and though, as Martinez writes, “we were more stupid than dangerous,” he wound up being ground down by a legal system that disproportionately punishes people of color. On that note, Martinez teases out an identity with many strands: bloodlines from Africa, Brazil, Indigenous South America, and Europe, with a history that implicates “my Portuguese ancestors…[who] forced my African ancestors into boats and brought them across the Atlantic.” Later, the author writes, “What I know is that I am an other in a nation and world that demands categorization.” Martinez’s prose comes to life when he honors his late brother, and he is also insightful on his break with the church, which he condemns as being characterized by “racism, obsession about sin, right-wing politics, bigotry, misogyny, and homophobia.” His views of academia are scarcely less excoriating, as he rightly questions why the faculty of his school is overwhelmingly white while only a little more than a third of the students are. It all adds up to a mixed bag, and though it’s not The Basketball Diaries, it has its moments.
An adequate exercise in remembrance, punctuated by memorable moments of resistance and righteous anger.