My Favorite Scar

Description

A teenage girl and her gangster father embark on a road trip toward revenge in this award-winning coming-of-age Argentinian noir.

Fifteen-year-old Ámbar has never known any parent other than her father, Víctor Mondragón, nor any life other than his. On any given Friday night, Ámbar longs to be at the arcade or a rock concert, but she’s more likely to be patching up Víctor’s latest bullet hole in a dingy motel or creating a new set of fake identities for the both of them.

When a tattooed mercenary kills Víctor’s best friend and vows that Víctor is next, father and daughter set off on a joyride across Argentina in search of bloody retribution. But Ámbar’s growing pains hurt worse than her beloved sawed-off shotgun’s kickback as she begins to question the structure of her world. How much is her father not telling her? Could her life ever be different? And will she survive long enough to find out?

It’s kill or be killed in this gritty, devastating coming-of-age thriller from the king of Argentine neo-noir.Praise for My Favorite Scar

Winner of the Spanish-language Dashiell Hammett Prize
CrimeReads Most Anticipated Crime Fiction of 2024

“Knocked my socks off . . . This is a wonderful coming-of-age story, ably written and delicately translated by Mallory Craig-Kuhn, of two lovable characters and a supporting cast of colorful deplorables.”
—The Durango Telegraph

“It’s her [Ámbar’s] complex journey through her father’s past sins that gives the story its heart. The rest is a dark, compelling vision of violence and retribution.”
—CrimeReads

“Paper Moon meets Kill Bill in this unnerving story about how a father’s violent criminal career effects his fifteen-year-old daughter.”
—Booklist

“The book feels like Richard Stark’s Parker had a ‘bring your daughter to work’ day and stands apart from other thrillers as Ferraro gives narrative space to Ámbar’s own self-discovery . . . This literary thriller with The Last of Us dynamics will please readers who like thrills with substance.”
—Library Journal

“Nicolás Ferraro has a lyrical eloquence with words, making My Favorite Scar an exceptional read by a nuanced storyteller who will leave you scarred in all the right ways.”
—Yasmin Angoe, Anthony Award–nominated author of Her Name Is Knight

“In My Favorite Scar, fifteen-year-old Ámbar’s father forces her into a revenge spree that exists at a nexus of noir and coming-of-age, with Ámbar facing truths about the world and her family that she may never embrace, but knows she has to live with. I truly enjoyed this—it had the real noir feel of a Black Lizard discovery, or one of Massimo Carlotto’s best books.”
—Nathan Ripley, author of Find You in the Dark

“[Ferraro’s] writing is clear, compelling and explosive, yet, at the same time pensively poetic.”
—BookTrib

“My Favorite Scar is a success, made memorable by its stylish prose, its foreign location, but mostly by its teenage narrator . . . The periods when the novel slows to a more contemplative pace are amongst the best of the book. We are treated to her most personal thoughts, with a level of intimacy not often found within crime fiction.”
—Crime Fiction Lover

“This tale is a nice mix of crime noir and coming of age as a teenage girl and her father are on the run seeking revenge . . . Víctor and Ámbar quickly become indelible characters as our wayward protagonists.”
—Bookreporter.com

“My Favorite Scar is a nihilistic road novel of unrelenting bleakness that takes readers on a hair-raising tour of Argentina’s criminal underworld . . . [Ferraro’s] deftly created suspense builds with every mile driven, every fake ID used, every drop of blood spilled. My Favorite Scar is a pitch-black coming-of-age tale that reverberates with oft-poetically expressed pain and sadness—and maybe, just maybe, a hint of hope.”
—BookPage

“A brutal father-daughter road trip revenge saga . . . Ferraro ends on a satisfying note. For readers with strong stomachs, this offers high-octane suspense.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Ferraro smoothly combines elements of noir, road novel, and coming-of-age story . . . The climactic violence is both inevitable and devastating. A brisk, gritty crime yarn.”
—Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Nicolás Ferraro

“After seventy years of voracious and omnivorous reading, finding a new writer remains a great pleasure, especially one who honors tradition while speaking clearly, even beautifully, in a voice all his or her own. Nico Ferraro is one of those writers.”
—James Sallis, author of Drive

“Written with a relentless pace, Cruz explores the ferocity of family loyalty and treachery. This is a window into a world most people don’t know and no one will forget.”
—Chris Offutt, author of Shifty’s Boys

“Ferraro’s Cruz is like an exquisitely crafted blade, beautiful to the eye but deadly effective.” 
—Reed Farrel Coleman, New York Times bestselling author of Sleepless City

“Nicolás Ferraro is the kind of writer who understands how to use blood to tattoo a story on your soul.”
—Gabino Iglesias, author of Coyote Songs

“As cold and shocking as a gun barrel against your neck, Cruz is about the blood you share with family, and the blood you spill because of it, set in the savage underbelly of Argentina. A darkly fun, fast-paced and compulsively readable noir thriller.”
—Jordan Harper, Edgar Award–winning author of She Rides Shotgun

“Ferraro’s portrait of a crushingly bleak hellscape where ‘hope and torture are the same word’ is unremittingly violent, but he writes about that world with unabashed realism, breathtaking power, and a narrative ferocity that never lets up.”
—Booklist, Starred Review

“A vivid, bloody noir set amidst prison and gangland violence in northern Argentina, where two brothers swear themselves to different paths and wrestle with their father’s violent legacy.”
—CrimeReadsNicolás Ferraro was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1986. While studying to become a graphic designer at the University of Buenos Aires, Ferraro earned a living by playing poker; now he works as the coordinator at the Center for Crime Fiction at Argentina’s National Library. Cruz, his first novel to be translated into English, has been published in Argentina, Mexico, and Spain, and was a finalist for the Dashiell Hammett Award. My Favorite Scar has also been published in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. Ferraro’s work has been translated into French, Portuguese, and Italian.Chapter 1

“You’re my favorite scar.”
     That’s what my dad says, patting his forearm where he has my name tattooed:
     Á M B A R.
     And two red hibiscus flowers, one on each side.
     He says those were my favorite flowers when I was little. I don’t remember having a favorite flower. I don’t remember him being around much when I was little, either. And I definitely don’t remember being little.
     He wears my name near his elbow, right where he rolls his sleeves up to, so it’s almost always hidden. They can use your tattoos to identify you, he’ll say, and then he’ll tell me a story about Furia Roldán, who got caught because of an eight ball on the back of his neck.
     But what covers my name now is the blood dripping from a bullet hole in his chest, next to his shoulder. I hand him a towel. He wipes the tattoo off first and smiles at me. I give him a look that says get on with it and he finally starts cleaning the wound. The towel turns red, little by little.
     “It went straight through,” he says and flops down on the couch, crushing the book I was reading when I saw the VW 1500’s high beams and then him, with no shirt, leaning on the doorframe just long enough to catch his breath and leave a puddle of blood.
     I do everything from memory; he doesn’t have to ask. I pull aside the curtain of the window that looks out over the road to see if anyone’s coming. I can’t see the car, but he left the headlights on, and they’re crashing against the side of the house. As evening falls, they become more visible. I get out the tackle box we use as a first aid kit, give him a couple of pills and a glass of water, and set a bottle down next to him. Blood loss makes you thirsty. The muscles in his arms are shaking in a strange way.
     “What were you wearing?”
     “My shirt.”
     Dad taught me how to remove bullets and sew up cuts when I was twelve. He taught me how to shoot at thirteen, and how to hotwire a car a few months later.
     If the bullet went straight through, infection is the problem. Cloth or bits of the bullet that might be stuck inside. I pour hydrogen peroxide over it until there’s an eruption of pink foam. He swears, but I don’t care. I take a close look. The entry wound is round, the exit wound looks like a pothole. A medium caliber, 9mm for sure. A .45 would have taken out a chunk, a .22 wouldn’t have made it through. At one point I was surprised—or scared—that I knew all this. Now I know it the same way I can identify a bird by its feathers, tell a bill is fake just by touching it, or know the difference between a garden snake and a viper by the scales on its head.
     Blood flows out like it doesn’t want to be inside him. I pour more peroxide on it so I can see the wound. Dad grits his teeth and holds his breath. All I find is torn flesh.
     “It doesn’t look so bad.”
     “Thanks, Freckles.”
     I’m glad he calls me that, something other than his favorite scar.
     Coming from almost any other man, that wouldn’t mean much. All most of them have is a little scar on their eyebrow from when they fell as a kid, or the reminder of when they had their appendix out, or a cut from some fight where the only thing hanging in the balance was their pride.
     Dad carries his scars like medals. His whole body tells his story better than he could himself. Víctor Mondragón is a man who can be read in Braille better than he can be heard, but he can’t be truly understood in any language.
     He might carry my name on his skin, but he never held me in his arms. He chose my name, but he was never around until he didn’t have any other choice. He became my father the way other people become survivors. It’s something that happens after an accident. For my parents, love was an accident they both managed to drag themselves away from, covered in scars. So I guess it does make sense that he says I’m his favorite scar.
     I go to look for more gauze in the bathroom. When I come back, I can see through the open door that the car’s windshield is full of holes and shattered into a spiderweb, covered in blood. There’s a dead person in the front seat on the passenger side, but I can’t see who it is. I don’t care. There’s no one it would hurt for me to lose.
     I soak a piece of gauze in disinfectant and press it against
the wound.
     “Hold that,” I tell him, and he does as I say.
     I put another piece of gauze on the exit wound while I tear off a piece of tape with my teeth. I press down and watch my fingernails turn red.
     “What are you laughing at?” he asks.
     He hates when I paint my nails, but he doesn’t seem to mind painting them himself with his blood.
     “Nothing.”
     I continue wrapping up his chest and shoulder. I go around once, twice, three and a half times, and then the tape runs out. He touches the bandage and moves his shoulder.
     “Leave it alone, will you?” I say, and he laughs.
     Then his smile fades and finally disappears. He hangs his head, looking at the flowers in his tattoo, and scratches at the streaks of blood next to them. It looks like the petals fell off, like the hibiscus flowers have dried out, but no one’s decided to throw them out—yet.
     “Get your stuff,” he says. Before I can reply, he adds, “Yeah, I know I promised.”
     He heads to his room and comes out wearing an undershirt, doing up his button-down. He puts the guns from all the different rooms into a bag. You never know where they might find you. He goes from the bathroom to my bedroom, sees me standing still in the middle of the living room, and says, get moving, tells me again to get my things. He says not to forget the shotgun the way other fathers tell their daughters not to forget their jacket. But I just stand there, rubbing the blood off my fingernails, because everything’s already packed away in my bag, like always. Because Dad might make promises, but even if he doesn’t know it, his promises always have an expiration date.
     I go into my room and pick up my bag. Back in the living room, I throw in my Walkman and book.
     “Grab something warm, it’s getting cold out,” he says and stops in the doorway, his boot in the puddle of blood that used to be his and now belongs to no one. He looks at me, and I already know what he’s going to say. “Someday you’ll understand.”
     I still don’t understand him, and I hope I never will.
     I stand next to the window. Dad turns off the VW 1500’s headlights. He pulls the dead man around to the trunk using just his good arm. It’s a clumsy job because of his wound, but I’m not going to help him.
     Not this time.
     The evening lengthens his shadow until it stretches across the grass and climbs up the walls of the house. When I was a little girl, I liked to watch my shadow at this time of day. I would say to my dad that I was nine, but my shadow was already fifteen, and that’s how big my body was going to be when I grew up.
     Far off, on the cusp of the land, the sun is a match that the wind finally blows out, and the shadows of everything, the car, the house, Dad, me, become one and sink into the grass. Now that I really am fifteen, I don’t have a shadow, just darkness.US

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