Now I Surrender (2024) is a historical novel by the acclaimed Mexican author Álvaro Enrigue. A work of autofiction and a revisionist Western, the novel weaves together three distinct timelines to explore the brutal history of the American Southwest. The narrative is framed by the reflections of a contemporary Mexican writer on a family road trip through the former territory of Apachería, a research journey for a book about the Apache Wars. This modern pilgrimage intersects with two historical threads: one set in 1836, following Lieutenant Colonel José María Zuloaga’s pursuit of the Apache band that has abducted a widow named Camila Ezguerra; the other composed of vignettes detailing the final decades of the conflict and the lives of legendary figures like Geronimo and Cochise. Through this structure, the novel examines how Names and Borders as Tools of Colonialism are used to erase Indigenous history, how Violence as the Foundation of the Nation-State defined both Mexico and the United States, and the complex reality of The Fluidity of Borderlands Identity.

Enrigue is the author of several celebrated novels translated into English, including Sudden Death (2013) and You Dreamed of Empires (2024). His work has received significant international recognition; Sudden Death won Spain’s prestigious Herralde Prize, and the original Spanish version of Now I Surrender, titled Ahora me rindo y eso es todo (2018), received the Ciutat de Barcelona award. The English translation of Now I Surrender, by Natasha Wimmer, continued this critical success, becoming a finalist for the 2024 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction and being longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature. Enrigue’s metafictional approach, blending historical fact with the narrator’s personal quest for identity, critiques the romanticized mythology of the American West and forces a reckoning with the shared, violent history of the borderlands.

This guide refers to the 2026 Riverhead Books edition of the English translation of the novel by Natasha Wimmer.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain depictions of graphic violence, racism, child abuse, illness, disordered eating, physical abuse, cursing, death, and animal cruelty and death.

Plot Summary

The novel unfolds across three interwoven timelines. In the present day, the narrator, a Mexican author living in New York, grapples with his national identity while undertaking a family road trip through the historical territory of Apachería. His journey is a research pilgrimage for a book on the Apache Wars. 

The second timeline, set in 1836, follows Lieutenant Colonel José María Zuloaga, a Chihuahuan officer tasked with rescuing Camila Ezguerra, a widow abducted from her ranch near Janos by an Apache war party. Zuloaga assembles a motley company of irregulars, including a young Raramuri tracker named Mauricio Corredor, a former zarzuela singer-turned-nun named Elvira, two murderous Yaqui twins, and a dancing master called El Márquez. 

The third narrative thread consists of historical essays and vignettes focusing on the final decades of the Apache Wars in the late 19th century, detailing the lives of legendary figures like Mangas Coloradas, Cochise, Victorio, Nana, and Geronimo, and the political machinations of their American counterparts, General Nelson Miles and President Grover Cleveland.

Camila’s story begins with her desperate flight across the prairie as Apaches raid the Ezguerra ranch, killing her stepson, Hector, and his family. Stripping off her clothes to run faster, she is captured by the chief, Mangas Coloradas, and subjected to a brutal journey north. Naked and exposed, she is beaten and tormented, but gradually begins to assimilate. Her captors force her to consume raw calf parts, a gruesome initiation that marks her acceptance into the band. She is left for a time with a young novice warrior, Goyahkla (the future Geronimo), with whom she develops a teacher-student bond, learning the Apache language and ways of survival. 

Zuloaga’s pursuit begins in Casas Grandes, where he recruits his initial force with a barbecue of roasted pronghorn. The expedition is arduous, crossing the harsh, waterless terrain of the Valley of the Moon. His troop is whittled down by desertions but strengthened by new additions, including the Yaqui twins freed from the Janos jail and Pisago Cabezón, a Coyotero Apache guide loaned to them by the American smuggler Robert McKnight.

As Zuloaga’s party tracks Camila’s captors into the Mogollon Mountains, the narrator’s family travels through the same landscapes, visiting key sites like Fort Sill, Oklahoma. There, at the Apache prisoner of war cemetery, his children make an offering at Geronimo’s grave, a pyramid-like monument. His skull is rumored to have been stolen by Prescott Bush. The historical narrative details the betrayals that fueled the conflict, such as the “Cut the Tent” incident, where Second Lieutenant George Bascom’s treachery turns Chiricahua chief Cochise into an implacable enemy of the Americans. The narrator’s research illuminates the Apaches’ military genius, their ability to disappear on stony ground, and their brutal but deeply familial culture. Zuloaga’s expedition faces its own trials, including an ambush in a canyon. During the ambush, Zuloaga’s Sonoran recruits are killed, but the Yaqui twins take down several Apache warriors before being slain themselves. Zuloaga, Corredor, Elvira, and the fatally wounded El Márquez are spared by the Apache leader, who respects their Chihuahuan tenacity.

The fragmented historical narrative chronicles the final surrender of the last free Chiricahuas in 1886. After being relentlessly pursued by the US Fourth Cavalry under Captain Elpenor Ware Lawton and Mexican forces in the Sierra Madre, Geronimo and Chief Naiche enter negotiations with Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood, the only American officer they trust. General Nelson Miles, hungry for a victory to propel his political ambitions, orchestrates a highly publicized surrender at Skeleton Canyon. He deceives Geronimo, promising a temporary two-year exile in Florida with his family, while secretly intending to hand him over to civilian authorities in Arizona for trial and execution. The plan is thwarted when Lawton, following Miles’s clandestine counter-orders, puts the Chiricahuas on a train and transports them through Texas, outside of Arizona’s jurisdiction. The 27 surviving warriors and their families are ultimately sent to Fort Sam Houston and then to a life of incarceration, never to return to their homeland.

In the climax of the 1836 timeline, Zuloaga finally reaches Mangas Coloradas’s ranchería on the Gila River. He finds Camila, now pregnant with the chief’s child and fully integrated into the tribe. She has found a life of freedom and respect she never knew as a Mexican woman and refuses to return. She tells Zuloaga of her brutal hazing by the other Apache women and her subsequent acceptance after proving her resilience. Zuloaga, respecting her choice, accepts his mission’s failure and agrees to carry Mangas’s message of peace back to the governor of Chihuahua. He departs with only Corredor, leaving Elvira to bury El Márquez. 

The narrator’s journey culminates in a visit with his children to the Chiricahua Mountains, Cochise’s final resting place. Caught in a violent, terrifying storm inside a mountain grotto with his sons and daughter, he experiences a moment of deep connection and terror. The next day, after dropping his eldest son, Cruz, at the airport for a flight back to Mexico, the family makes a final stop on the border of New Mexico and Colorado. As a farewell to Apachería, the children shout the names of the great chiefs into the vast emptiness, crying, “There are still Apaches, Nana, and we remember your name” (452).