In his junior year, seventeen-year-old Abraham learns how to drive a stick shift. He falls in love for the first time. And he has been in three fights and suspended twice, all before Thanksgiving. His grandmother fears the hard future that awaits him, so she invites her son—the one with a fat police file who has hurt his mother so many times—back into the house, and he is determined to make a man of his nephew. Meanwhile, Abraham’s feelings for his friend Ophelia grow, and she tries to understand why he fights. “This will end badly,” she warns. At school, Abraham learns about genetics, and he wonders if people are born bad. Is it in their DNA? Was he born to punch and kick and scream and fight and destroy things because of the genes in his body? Is that what happened to his father? All he knows is that his father is dead and his mother is gone. “Jiménez explores shades of manhood and all it entails with a deft, poetic hand.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review “Joe Jiménez’s writing has astonished me and made me sit up and pay attention since the first time I heard him read his work out loud. He continues to make me yearn to hear what he has to say in a voice that is at once masculine, tender, brave and beautiful. I am his longtime fan.”—Sandra Cisneros, poet, essayist, novelist “Joe Jiménez extiende chingazos unafraid and painfully poetic in this story of love, loss and family. I constantly felt a tension waiting for the collapse of Abram and his world; wanting to shield my eyes but not being able to. In Bloodline everything is beautiful and everything hurts, as it is whenever we chase that kind of truth and love that is always within our reach but still too far away.”—Isabel Quintero, author of Gabi, A Girl in Pieces