Parker’s Pages: Vampires of El Norte

Have you noticed that Vampires are making a comeback? With two new iconic vampire movies to swoon over, Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu remake (2024) and—a new personal favorite—Ryan Coogler’s Sinners (2025), there’s a growing trend towards blood sucking fiends in media (again!). And these aren’t the tame, glittery vampires from Twilight—these are the gritty, murderous creatures from our nightmares, and I love it! After watching Sinners during its box office run, I have been on a major vampire kick. So, naturally, I had to deliver a vampire novel for Parker’s Pages this month, and I found the perfect speculative fiction story for you all.

Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas (paperback)

The Evergreen Echo

Isabel Cañas’ Vampires of El Norte is everything you could want out of a vampire novel, but it is also so much more: a commentary on culture and colonialism, an exploration of history, and a vibrant romance. Isabel Cañas is a fantastic voice here in the PNW, and I’m excited to share her novel with you.

[Spoilers ahead for Nosferatu, Sinners, and Vampires of El Norte.]

There are a few things that all the vampire stories I have listed here have in common. For one, they’re all in the genre of speculative historical fiction, placing their vampire stories in the heart of something real, with nods to real historical events that ground the supernatural. For Nosferatu it’s the fashion of 1800s Germany and nods towards plague and sickness, for Sinners it’s the racial disparity and spiritual undertones that mark the Mississippi Delta in the 1930s, and for Vampires of El Norte it’s the battle for Texas and its surrounding areas during the Mexican-American War in the 1840s. The speculative lies in their magical interpretations of these real-life events, imagining outcomes different from their real-life outcomes and consequences.

Further, vampires and all that comes with them—overconsumption, violence, and predation—are all used by these creators as commentary for larger concepts. Overall, the stories use vampires as a way of examining colonialism and the way that dominant, white cultures prey upon minoritized communities and native practices.

In Nosferatu, Thomas Hutter (played by my beloved Nicholas Hoult) encounters Romani, a previously enslaved peoples in Transylvania, who he is terrified of due to their ‘uncivilized’ practices, though their ‘occult’ methods lead to their taking down of Count Orlok. In Sinners, the head vampire Remmick is an Irish immigrant, and his own country’s history of being overtaken by British colonizers mimics that of the Black Americans he is trying to convert. In Vampires of El Norte, while vampires pose a threat to our main characters, most of the concern is placed on the Anglos who threaten their land and way of life as they try to gain control over Texas.

Finally, the ROMANCE! I’m not sure what it is about vampire stories exactly, but it seems we have collectively agreed that they lend themselves to torrid love affairs and love stories. Is it because of the danger? The neck biting? The goth fashions? I’m not sure, but all of these tales have an undercurrent of passion that propels characters forward. Count Orlok’s deep and insatiable hunger for Ellen leads him to nearly kill an entire city in Nosferatu. Love for community and music drives the majority of the characters in Sinners, with plenty of hot and heavy scenes (Michael B. Jordan, the man that you are) that stand in contrast to the gory and intense fights. And though Vampires of El Norte obviously contains vampires, romance and love for their land is what moves our characters.

Excerpt from Vampires of El Norte

The Evergreen Echo

But before this turns into too much of an analytic essay, let’s return to Vampires of El Norte. This story is beautiful; Cañas’ writing style is effortlessly rhythmic. Each sentence is carefully crafted, carrying you along to the next, and the characters are lovely and rich. The novel begins in a flashback to nine years prior to the story’s beginning, and for the first quarter of the text, we learn about our main characters almost entirely through their memories of each other. This technique worked really well, creating a rich and vibrant relationship between the main characters without having to spoon feed their past to us in exposition.

Cañas also creates a relationship dynamic that I haven’t seen in any previous romance novels before. Because our characters were childhood sweethearts, now estranged, Cañas creates a slow burn between characters who have already been romantic. And the tension this creates is WOW! While you’re mentally shaking both of them by the shoulders, Cañas continues to weave a larger, intense plot with threats around every corner. Vampires, battles for land, and the interpersonal mush together into a thrilling tale.

If you’re looking for a novel that ticks a lot of boxes at once, and with precision, you need look no further. Vampires of El Norte has the makings of a romance, thriller, historical fiction, and speculative future, with an ending that you need to experience for yourself.