Your favorite characters in fiction

This novel features one of the most compelling women in contemporary fiction that I’ve encountered in a long time. Alma Rosales is a shape-shifter: She’ll lower her voice, square her shoulders, raise her fists and will herself into her alter ego, Jack Camp. Then, when it suits her, she’ll retrieve her ringletted wigs, her flounced skirts and her demure demeanor and return to Alma. But it’s fascinatingly clear that Alma prefers life as Jack.

My appreciation for the duality and dauntlessness of Alma Rosales made me wonder just what a writer does to make a female character crackle on the page.

So, this is the start of an occasional series from The Thread about contemporary fiction’s most enthralling women. I’ll talk about spies and pioneers, high society dames and daring detectives. And I hope you’ll join in.

And since I’ve begun with the unforgettable Alma Rosales, I’ll leave you with Carrasco’s description of the way Alma slips into her second self: “To lacquer on manhood, Alma starts with the hands. Gentlemen wear rings. A working man wears calluses. He leaves dirty fingerprints on newspapers, drops peanut shells in his path. His nails may or may not be bitten. In winter, his knuckles crack from cold.”

Katrina Carrasco in the creator of one of my favorite female characters of contemporary fiction.