The Amado Women
Désirée Zamorano
(Author)
Description
Bound by blood and separated by secrets, the Amado women must come together in the face of daunting circumstances.
In Southern California, divorced matriarch Mercy Amado worries deeply for her three daughters. Celeste, the oldest, doesn't speak to her youngest sister. Fiercely intelligent and proud, she has moved away to San Jose and prides herself on being the fixer of all problems. Sylvia, who married a rich but abusive spouse, has immersed herself in suburbia with her two young daughters. Nataly is trying find fulfillment and security in the free-spirited Latino art world. She works on her textile creations by day and waits tables in an upscale restaurant by night.
Can Mercy bring her daughters back together following a string of earth shattering events? Or will the Amado women close ranks and lose each other in the process?
Product Details
| Publisher | Cinco Puntos Press |
| Publish Date | July 01, 2014 |
| Pages | 240 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Paperback / softback |
| EAN/UPC | 9781935955733 |
| Dimensions | 8.9 X 6.1 X 0.8 inches | 0.8 pounds |
About the Author
Los Angeles native Désirée Zamorano is the author of the groundbreaking, family-saga, historical fiction novel Dispossessed as well as Amarisa's Cooking Pot: Tales of Life in All Its Wonders. Her work is an exploration of where cultures connect and collide. Selections can be found in Alta, The Kenyon Review Online, and Akashic's South Central Noir. Her work "Caperucita Roja" was chosen as a distinguished short story in Best of American Mystery and Suspense, 2022. She teaches linguistic and cultural diversity at California State University Long Beach and is a senior fiction editor at Silk Road Review. You can find her at desireezamorano.com.
Reviews
"Far from the cholos and maids of a cliché Latino Los Angeles, these beautiful Amado women dine at chichi hotels and restaurants, carry plush designer bags, and steer new cars into suburbias. But Zamorano doesn't leave it at that--because even an American dream-fulfilled life is still full of real life, and what alone endures is family." -- Dagoberto Gilb, author of Before the End, After the Beginning
"What's it like reading Zamorano's debut novel? Take three wildly divergent sisters, a worrying mother, and an electrifying city. Blend in the heartache of marriage and an arsenal of secrets. Serve to all your comadres with a jalapeño twist." -- Stephanie Elizondo Griest, author of Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlines
"Désirée Zamorano's first novel explores a world of Latinas that belongs to her alone. Such originality predicts a notable career in the world of fiction. The author's voice is true, and her stories feel real." -- Mark Childress, author of Crazy in Alabama and Georgia Bottoms
"Focuses on upwardly mobile, middle-class Latinas in contemporary Southern California. Her protagonists -- a matriarch and her three adult daughters -- are successful women, though not without the troubles many, regardless of economic status, encounter: failed marriages, family pressure to play an "appropriate" role, self-doubt in one's parenting decisions. An entertaining and important novel, The Amado Women offers a valid, realistic depiction of a group of Latinas largely ignored in US literature." -- Los Angeles Times
"Provocative.... Zamorano weaves in lighter moments with meditations on the women's emotional and cultural inheritances." -- Booklist
"The Amado women represent a mixture of traditional and modern values, and each defines her life by a set of complex rules. ... Zamorano provides a compassionate portrait of a family pushing difficulties aside to help each other." -- Kirkus Reviews
"A fast-paced story with lots of family drama and strong characters who overcome bad relationships and the other adversities life hands them." -- Library Journal
"A finely rendered story of a multigenerational Latina family overcoming individual setbacks and tragedies." -- Shelf Awareness
Earn by promoting books
