If it’s not quite true that Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club (Cinco Puntos, $16.95) for the characters in this year’s PEN/Faulkner Award-winning collection of short fiction, the Juárez bar gets a cameo in each of these seven warm and engaging stories. Benjamin Alire Sáenz, the Mexican-American poet and author of books for children and young adults, focuses on the Hispanic community in El Paso. Many of his characters have fled the violence of Juárez but remain connected to it by dealing or using drugs. Others restrict any addictive tendencies to drinking or serial hook-ups, activities that leave them depressed and frustrated; they don’t want love to be casual, but it’s a skill that perplexes them. Identity is similarly troubling; with allegiances in two languages, they’re constantly torn. While many, especially the fathers, respond to the insecurity of border-town life by growing bitter and domineering—one makes “cruelty…his drug of choice”—and children feel emotionally stunted, others find a refuge in art, falling in love with books if they can’t find the right person.