Now I Surrender Summary: A Journey Through Apachería
TL;DR: A Triptych of Apachería
In 1836, a Mexican lieutenant colonel leads a ragtag militia into a vast, lawless expanse known as Apachería.
Their mission: recover a young widow abducted during an Apache raid.
But the land they enter is not empty; it is a 350-year-old Indigenous nation with its own economy and governance.
Álvaro Enrigue’s Now I Surrender weaves this 19th-century quest with the later surrender of Geronimo and the author’s own 21st-century road trips across the American Southwest.
The novel examines borders, identity, and the erasure of a people through a mosaic of historical vignettes and metafictional reflection.
Readers of literary historical fiction, metafictional narratives, and stories about the American Southwest will find this book of interest.
Those drawn to complex portrayals of Indigenous history and the legacies of colonialism may also appreciate its layered approach.
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Now I Surrender: Book Details
- Genre & Subgenre: Historical Fiction / Metafiction / Postmodern Western / Literary Essay-Novel
- Core Narrative Tropes: Inverted captive narrative, desert quest/chase, meta-authorial intrusion, multi-perspective historical mosaic
- Tone & Atmosphere: Lyrical, melancholic, ironical, gritty, elegiac, atmospheric
- Primary Conflict: The military and cultural clash between Apache bands defending Apachería and the encroaching nation-states of Mexico and the United States
- Pacing Style: Non-linear, episodic, mosaic structure shifting between 1836, 19th-century archival accounts, and modern autobiographical road trips
- ISBN: 978-0593084076
- Pages: 464
- Book Structure: Three parts: Book I: Janos (17 sections), Book II: Album (26 sections), Book III: Aria (closing section)
Now I Surrender Summary: The Deep Dive (Spoilers)
Spoiler Warning: This section reveals major plot points and the ending.
In 1836, Lieutenant Colonel José María Zuloaga receives orders to track Apaches who raided a ranch near Janos. He assembles a militia of irregulars, including a Tarahumara boy, a fake nun, twin Yaqui brothers, a dancing master, and a young rancher.
They ride into Apachería, a borderless Indigenous country spanning present-day Chihuahua, Sonora, Arizona, and New Mexico. Along the trail, they find discarded clothing belonging to Camila Ezguerra, the widow abducted during the raid.
A Coyotero guide named Pisago Cabezón leads them through Guadalupe Pass and into the Mogollon Mountains. There, Bedonkohe Apache warriors under Chief Mangas Coloradas ambush them. The Yaqui twins and two Sonoran ranchers die in the firefight.
Zuloaga parleys with the Apaches and reaches Mangas Coloradas’s camp. He finds Camila alive, pregnant with Mangas’s child, and fully embracing her new life. She refuses to return to Mexican society.
Zuloaga accepts a peace message from Mangas and departs. Interwoven with this quest are later historical strands: Mauricio Corredor, the Tarahumara boy, grows up to kill Chief Victorio in 1880.
In 1886, Geronimo surrenders to General George Crook, saying, “Once I moved like the wind. Now I surrender to you and that is all.” He and his people are exiled as prisoners of war to Florida and Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
Geronimo dies of pneumonia in 1909 at Fort Sill, regretting his surrender. The novel also follows Álvaro Enrigue’s 21st-century road trip with his family across the Southwest as he wrestles with U.S. residency and Spanish citizenship.
Visiting Geronimo’s grave, Enrigue’s children leave offerings of flowers and stones. The book closes with a meditation on memory, state violence, and the enduring Indigenous presence.
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Characters In This Book
- Lieutenant Colonel José María Zuloaga: Leader of the Mexican irregulars from Buenaventura who tracks Apaches and leads the 1836 expedition.
- Camila Ezguerra: Former schoolteacher and widow abducted during an Apache raid; she chooses to remain with Mangas Coloradas as his wife.
- Mangas Coloradas (Fuerte): Bedonkohe Apache chief who takes Camila as his wife and commands the Mogollon territory.
- Goyahkla (Geronimo): Apache shaman and warrior who grows up under Mangas and Camila; later becomes the legendary leader who surrenders in 1886.
- Mauricio Corredor: Young Raramuri (Tarahumara) boy appointed corporal by Zuloaga; later becomes a scout who kills Chief Victorio in 1880.
- Doña Elvira (“Sister Elvis”): Former zarzuela singer living as a fake nun; an expert markswoman armed with a heavy Colt revolver.
- Guadalupe & Victoria: Twin Yaqui brothers released from the Janos presidio cell to serve as Zuloaga’s advance marksmen; die in the canyon ambush.
- El Márquez: A dancing master from Janos who speaks Apache and sings traditional Apache songs.
- El Gringo: A young Mexican rancher from Casas Grandes who joins Zuloaga’s militia.
- Hector Ezguerra: Don Leopoldo’s son, an agronomist from Massachusetts who brings his American family to the Janos ranch; killed in the Apache raid.
- Mistress Prudence Ezguerra: Hector’s Quaker American wife who arrives at the ranch with four children.
- Pisago Cabezón: Coyotero Apache tracker married to a Mexican woman; hired by Zuloaga to guide the troop.
- Robert McKnight: Virginian trader and whisky-seller who lends Pisago to Zuloaga.
- Detective Melitón Läufer: Argentine Jewish detective and former theater impresario; shot dead by Sister Elvira.
- El Vilchis & Eneas: Sonoran ranchers who join Zuloaga’s company; both killed in the Bedonkohe canyon ambush.
- General George Crook: U.S. Army general who accepts Geronimo’s surrender at Cañón de los Embudos in 1886.
- Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood (“Long Nose”): U.S. Cavalry officer who negotiates directly with Geronimo.
- Captain Elpenor Ware Lawton: U.S. Cavalry officer commanding the 1886 expedition that secures Geronimo’s surrender.
- General Nelson A. Miles: U.S. Army general who manages Geronimo’s final captivity and deportation.
- General James “El Gordo” Parker: U.S. Cavalry officer who guards Geronimo in San Antonio in 1886.
- Lieutenant Estrada: Mexican officer and translator who accompanies U.S. forces in 1886.
- Chief Victorio & Chief Nana: Mimbreño Apache leaders; Victorio is killed in 1880, while Nana continues raiding into his nineties.
- Chief Cochise & Naiche: Chiricahua leaders; Cochise wages early wars, and his son Naiche serves as the last hereditary chief.
- Doroteo Arango (Pancho Villa): Mexican revolutionary general who raids Columbus, New Mexico in 1916.
- The Narrator / Álvaro Enrigue & Family: Meta-fictional authorial strand tracking Enrigue’s family road trip and reflections on identity.
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The Vanished Nation: Themes in Now I Surrender
The Eradication of Apachería as an Erased Atlantis: The book portrays Apachería as a 350-year-old borderless nation with its own statehood, economy, and governance, erased from official maps by modern borders.
Identity, Citizenship, and Displacement: The narrative contrasts Apache rejection of state categories with bureaucratic classification, echoed in the author’s struggle over Spanish citizenship and U.S. residency.
Dignity, Resistance, and Surrender: Presented through the Chiricahua choice to fight until the end, Geronimo’s poetic declarations of defeat, and Camila’s refusal to return to Mexican society.
Metafiction and History as Occupation: Direct authorial commentary compares Hollywood Westerns with historical documents, framing modern nation-states as occupation forces on stolen Indigenous land.
The Cycle of Violence and Revenge Across Generations: Recurring border raids, scalp-bounty systems, and historical figures passing through the same desert canyons across different eras illustrate this theme.
Summary by Chapter (Spoilers)
Spoiler Warning: This section provides a brief summary of each chapter for readers who want to explore what’s inside. The book is divided into three parts: Book I: Janos (17 sections), Book II: Album (26 sections), and Book III: Aria (1 closing section).
Book I: Janos
Book I, Section 1 (Janos 1836 – Introduction to Janos & Zuloaga): Lieutenant Colonel José María Zuloaga receives dispatches ordering him to pursue Apaches. He prepares his horse and sets off from Buenaventura with his retired father.
Book I, Section 2 (The Ezguerra Ranch & Camila’s Marriage): Camila had married sixty-seven-year-old Leopoldo Ezguerra in a marriage of convenience. After Don Leopoldo dies, Zuloaga and his father arrive in Janos and negotiate for food and quarters.
Book I, Section 3 (Historical Reflection on Apachería & Hector’s Arrival): The author reflects on Apachería as an erased country. In April, Hector Ezguerra arrives at the Janos ranch with his American Quaker wife and four children, taking over the ranch accounts.
Book I, Section 4 (Author’s Reflections in New York & Zuloaga’s Troop Assembly): The author describes living in New York while collecting documentation for Spanish citizenship and U.S. residency. In 1836, Zuloaga recruits nine inexperienced young men at a Casas Grandes barbecue.
Book I, Section 5 (Meeting Geronimo & S.M. Barrett / Fort Sill 1905): In 1905 Lawton, Oklahoma, schoolteacher S.M. Barrett meets weekly with an elderly Geronimo to dictate his autobiography. Geronimo arrives on horseback during a snowstorm, severely ill.
Book I, Section 6 (Zuloaga Arrives in Janos & Hears of Camila’s Abduction): Zuloaga arrives in Janos and finds the town near-empty. Officials confirm that the Ezguerra ranch was burned and Camila was abducted. They direct him to Doña Elvira and mention two Yaqui twin prisoners.
Book I, Section 7 (Camila’s Capture & Geronimo’s 1886 Surrender): Camila was abducted during the Apache raid while walking in the hills. Decades later, on March 25, 1886, Geronimo surrenders to General George Crook, uttering his famous line.
Book I, Section 8 (Inspection of the Burned Ranch & Enlisting the Yaquis): Zuloaga inspects the scorched ruins of the Ezguerra ranch alongside Sister Elvira. Returning to Janos, Elvira unlocks the presidio cell, and Zuloaga enlists twin Yaqui prisoners Guadalupe and Victoria.
Book I, Section 9 (Author at Spanish Consulate & Camila’s Ordeal): The author describes declining to sign a sworn oath of loyalty to the King of Spain. In 1836, Camila is driven north across the desert tied to an Apache saddle frame, enduring physical abuse.
Book I, Section 10 (Tracking Camila across the Valley of the Moon): Zuloaga’s troop follows the trail left by the Apaches across the Valley of the Moon. They discover Camila’s discarded shoes, corset, and petticoats. Three deserting vaqueros flee.
Book I, Section 11 (Meeting Robert McKnight & Pisago Cabezón): Zuloaga’s troop encounters American trader Robert McKnight and his French gunman. Sister Elvira shoots a hole through a coin to prove her marksmanship. McKnight lends them his Coyotero brother-in-law, Pisago Cabezón, as a guide.
Book I, Section 12 (Author’s Visit to Fort Sill Apache Cemetery): The author and his family visit the Beef Creek Apache Cemetery at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. He reflects on how Apache leaders were re-contextualized by modern nation-states. His children leave offerings at Geronimo’s tomb.
Book I, Section 13 (The Twins’ Past & The Journey North): Pisago Cabezón guides Zuloaga’s troop through the desert toward the Mogollon Mountains. The Yaqui twins reveal they were imprisoned for flaying and torturing a Mexican rancher. El Márquez sings traditional Apache songs around the campfire.
Book I, Section 14 (Navigating Guadalupe Pass & Meeting Detective Läufer): Zuloaga’s troop rides through the Guadalupe Pass with weapons drawn. At a watering hole near Portal, they meet Argentine detective Melitón Läufer. When Läufer quotes Shakespeare, Sister Elvira recognizes him and shoots him dead.
Book I, Section 15 (Camila at Bear Creek & Battle of Tres Castillos): Camila learns to speak Apache words, hunt hares, and consume raw meat alongside young Goyahkla. Meanwhile, Sonoran ranchers join Zuloaga’s company. Historical context details the 1880 Battle of Tres Castillos, where Mauricio Corredor shoots Victorio dead.
Book I, Section 16 (Ascent into Mogollon Mountains & Pisago’s Disappearance): Pisago leads the troop high into the cold, snowy Mogollon ridge, warning them of sentinels. The troop spends a night in an abandoned cabin. The next day, Pisago Cabezón vanishes using an Apache horse-reversing trick.
Book I, Section 17 (Canyon Ambush & Camila’s Choice): Zuloaga’s troop descends a narrow canyon where Bedonkohe warriors ambush them. Vilchis, Eneas, and the Yaqui twins die. Zuloaga parleys with the Apaches and reaches Mangas Coloradas’s camp, where Camila refuses to return to Mexican society.
Book II: Album
August 8: The author analyzes Western films as American fairy tales that mythologize bureaucratic productivity over individual chaos.
Phoenix Johnston McMillan: Texan lawyer Amyntor Blair McMillan takes his wife and baby to Fort Sam Houston to view the imprisoned Apache leaders.
August 8: Later: The author and his family arrive at a rented desert house in Arizona, unpacking and gazing at the Milky Way.
Grover Cleveland: U.S. President Grover Cleveland confers with Secretary of War William Endicott regarding Geronimo’s capture and insists on an unconditional trial.
August 9: The author takes his children to visit the tourist-oriented “designer ruins” of Tombstone, Arizona.
General James “El Gordo” Parker: Retired General Parker returns to active duty at Fort Sam Houston in 1917, remembering his 1886 assignment guarding Geronimo at the same fort.
August 10: The author makes a pilgrimage to Fort Bowie in Apache Pass, reflecting on the 1861 Bascom Affair and Chief Cochise.
[He wasn’t the kind]: Historical narrative of Damián, a choirmaster’s son from Puebla nursed by an Apache captive woman, who becomes a traveling musician in the borderlands.
Charles B. Gatewood: Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood (“Long Nose”), wracked by severe rheumatism, meets Lieutenant Parker in the Mexican mountains while tracking Geronimo.
August 11: Damián’s companion reflects on his origins in Puebla and his wanderings through Saltillo and Nuevo León.
Elpenor Ware Lawton: Captain Lawton’s exhausted 4th Cavalry column reunites with Parker and Gatewood on the Aros River, debating whether to negotiate with Geronimo or execute him.
August 12: Narrative describing Damián playing cowbell, drums, and polkas in borderland taverns with New Mexican musicians.
[She glanced at the güero]: The woman tending Damián’s grave recounts his life to a young digger as they prepare to bury him in the mountain soil.
August 13: The author takes his children to Cochise’s grave in the Chiricahua Mountains, where a sudden desert rainstorm traps them in a rocky canyon shelter.
[How I would have liked]: Reflections on Damián’s travels to the remote mountain town of Bacerac in Sonora, where he played music for isolated mountain dwellers.
Doroteo the Younger: In 1916, Pancho Villa hides in the Tres Montañas caves from General Pershing’s Punitive Expedition, recalling meeting Geronimo in those same caves thirty years earlier.
Later: Pancho Villa describes his youthful encounter with Geronimo to his men, detailing Geronimo’s terrifying gaze and ultimate surrender to the Americans.
[I’ve been to Tesorababi]: Damián’s early conversations with an Irish miner in Tesorababi about whether Apaches enjoyed music.
General Estrada: Mexican Brigadier General Estrada meets General James Parker at Fort Sam Houston in 1916 during peace talks, recalling how they both accompanied Geronimo as young lieutenants in 1886.
[After this revelation]: Estrada recalls the tense 1886 meeting between Sonoran Prefect Francisco Aguirre, Captain Lawton, and Geronimo near Nacozari, where bloodshed was narrowly averted.
General Nelson A. Miles: General Miles uses a heliograph in Arizona to coordinate communications with Lawton in Mexico, determined to claim credit for Geronimo’s surrender.
[On his wanderings]: Reflections on the legendary Apache woman warrior Lozen, sister of Victorio, and her shamanic powers to sense enemy forces.
Insomnia: Historical overview of the Guadalupe Pass as the sole strategic mountain corridor between New Mexico and Sonora.
Deposition of Lieutenant Estrada in Arizpe, Sonora: Official 1886 deposition by Lieutenant Estrada detailing the journey of Lawton’s column escorting Geronimo across the border.
August 15, Late: Account of Apache chief Juh’s death in the Sierra Madre, his relationship with Geronimo, and how his son Asa Daklugie preserved Chiricahua oral history.
Book III: Aria
Book III: Aria: The novel concludes with a dialogue between Zuloaga and Camila in the Bedonkohe camp, where Camila reaffirms her identity.
In 1886, Geronimo holds baby Phoenix McMillan at Fort Sam Houston. In the contemporary thread, Álvaro Enrigue drops his son Cruz off at the airport, closing with a reflection on the modern state as an occupation force.
Books Like Now I Surrender
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy: A visceral epic set along the 19th-century U.S.-Mexico borderlands during the scalp-hunting era, sharing a brutal, mythic landscape of borderland violence.
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño: A postmodern Mexican novel using fragment-driven, polyphonic structures to explore memory, exile, and narrative pursuit across geography and time.
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli: A contemporary meta-fictional novel centered on a family road trip through the U.S. Southwest and Apachería, interweaving personal reflection and Indigenous histories.
News of the World by Paulette Jiles: A historical Western set in post-Civil War Texas dealing with captive return, borderland landscapes, and cultural boundaries between settlers and Indigenous nations.
You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue: Enrigue’s companion historical novel exploring the clash of empires during Hernán Cortés’s entry into Tenochtitlan.
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Memorable Quotes from Now I Surrender
“Once I moved like the wind. Now I surrender to you and that is all.” — Geronimo at Cañón de los Embudos, March 1886.
“This gargantuan defeat of liberty, all the fault of geometry.” — Opening epigraph.
“In the beginning, things appear. Writing is a defiant gesture we’ve long since gotten used to: where there was nothing, somebody put something, and now everybody sees it.” — Narrator, Book I: Janos.
“It is never too late so long as one Apache lives.” — Chief Nana after the massacre of Victorio’s band in 1880.
“Having a king is good if you’re the king.” — Cruz, the author’s young son.
“I’d rather take a bullet than return to Janos.” — Camila Ezguerra to Lieutenant Colonel Zuloaga.
“We aren’t the children of these lands; we’re an occupation force. We should be living on our knees. We should have to give it all back.” — Narrator at the San Carlos reservation.
