Books

Set against a vast swath of humanity and place, the stories in Once Wild transport us equally to humid fecund tributaries in Amazonas, winter gripped streets of Manhattan, and beyond.

​

del llano's luminous characters plunge into the most raw and defining moments of human experience --

 

~ A writer in New York eulogizes his father’s global legacy, unearthing a haunting secret from their exotic past.

~ An aircraft engineer from Ohio wrestles with inner demons when one of his planes goes down fatally in Argentina.

~ An affluent family in Connecticut is thrown into turmoil during the holidays when their youngest son returns home in drag with a bold attempt to reconcile the suicide of his older brother.

~ The widow of a renowned Poet Laureate devises a plan to smuggle her late husband’s ashes into Mozambique and the Indian Ocean, honoring his final wish to have his remains scattered across the seven seas.

~ A retired urban professor experiences a curious awakening following a surgical procedure under propofol, which leads him to a life altering decision.

~ A Salvadoran refugee turned lawyer travels to rural Iowa to face a conservative farm family with the painful truth surrounding their son’s tragic drowning in Hawaii.

~ An agnostic scientist from Sweden finds herself alienated in her marriage when her husband’s profound connection with the Divine challenges her paradigm of love and existence.  

​

del llano’s characters unleash narratives that are both empathetic and humorous. Each story arrives with the force of lived truth: visceral, compassionate, and shot through with unexpected levity, chronicling our collective and precarious journeys of resilience and survival.

 

Written with the lyrical precision of a master, Once Wild is a stunning testament to human tenacity — proof that our most fracturing moments are also, somehow, the ones that make us whole.

​