BOOKS
AND SO I TOOK
THEIR EYE
COMING JULY 17, 2025
When a body is found on the black-sand beaches of Guatemala, it sparks a chain of events that ripple across the globe.
From an Italian tailor crushed under the weight of his father’s legacy to a mother challenging local snobbery on the cricket fields of England, a vengeful Bolivian priest chasing Che Guevara’s ghost, to a Bay Area therapist blind to his own advice, the lives of a seemingly unconnected group of strangers become fatefully entangled in murder, arson, betrayal, and love.
Guided by the ancient creed of "an eye for an eye," And So I Took Their Eye is a gripping collection of interlinked stories exploring what happens when justice is taken into your own hands—and ultimately, what it means to be human. Set against the legacy of U.S. imperialism in Latin America, the hollow virtue-signaling of Silicon Valley progressives, and the ways toxic masculinity—both overt and insidious—shapes the lives of people and the systems they are trapped in, this collection examines abuses of power in a world fractured by inequalities.
As these characters confront these brutal truths, morality blurs, forcing them to question the meaning of belonging and the lengths they’ll go to carve out their place in an unforgiving world.
And So I Took Their Eye is influenced by Shehan Karunatilaka's Chinaman, Rodrigo Fuentes’s Trout Belly Up and the writing of Fernanda Melchor.
Ben C. Davies’ stories are arresting: the prose sharp and unrelenting, his characters’ ‘true colours’ revealed with an arch wryness. Davies forces us to re-think all that we do not want to see—in our societies, in our cultures. Bravo!
—Alicia J Rouverol, Dry River and ‘I Was Content and Not Content’, nominated for the OHA Book Award
"Ben C. Davies writes with precision, curiosity, and a willingness to get close to the nerve. In And So I Took Their Eye, he plays with form—his stories appear as letters, therapy notes, and fractured timelines—to track how vengeance plays out across countries and communities. The stories are tough, honest, and threaded with grace. Along the way, Davies defines his own voice in his homage to the shapes, tones, and rhythms produced by writers he loves.
Whether it’s the priest in Bolivia, the British traveler hiding out at a yoga retreat in Mexico, or the daughter watching her mother seek quiet revenge over tea at an English cricket match, these are stories about what we carry, what we can’t undo, and what lingers."
– Matthew Clark Davison, Author of Doubting Thomas and co-author of The Lab: Experiments in Writing Across Genre.
BLACK
SAND
Ben is currently querying his debut novel, Black Sand.
As the mystery of death lingers, so too does a deeper question:
who profits from paradise, and who is left behind?
On Guatemala’s Pacific coast, a small village is devastated by fire and the mysterious death of Carlos Hernández, a former community leader and activist. As the town grapples with grief and loss, long-buried secrets resurface, threatening to unravel the fragile fabric of a once-unified community.
Set against a backdrop of relentless economic and social upheaval, Black Sand unfolds across ten years of dramatic change as a quiet fishing village transforms into Guatemala’s foremost tourist destination. Told through the voices of eight interwoven characters—locals and outsiders alike—the story follows hotel owners, Mayan weavers, yoga teachers, and street cleaners, each reckoning with the aftershocks of relentless change and the true cost of progress.
Black Sand is a lyrical and unflinching exploration of capitalism’s reach and the enduring fight to resist it. It captures the disruptive forces of tourism, political corruption, and Western expansion on a rural village struggling to hold onto its soul. Above all, Black Sand is a profound meditation on belonging—to a place, to a people, and ultimately, to oneself.