Their Dogs Came with Them

Helena María Viramontes's power is in her heartfelt observations about the forgotten poor. Not simply the poor, I mean the despised and reviled: the homeless, the immigrant, the cholas and cholos. This novel takes flight in its accurate portrayal of its characters' language and landscape. She is as compassionate as John Steinbeck, as sweeping as the unflinching camera of Sebastião Salgado. -- Sandra Cisneros, author of Caramelo and The House on Mango Street
Their Dogs Came with Them is a book that is upon you before you know it and once read cannot be shaken. A bravura performance by one of our country's finest talents. Extraordinary. -- Junot Díaz, author of Drown
Written with an honesty and compassion that is lacking in our time, Their Dogs Came with Them illuminates a people and place where hopes arise and are defeated, only to arise again. With elegance and poetic precision, Helena María Viramontes has captured a humanity that will not stay down, no matter what the odds. Like the characters in this novel, her prose is a warm breath of the real thing. -- Ernesto Quiñonez, author of Chango's Fire
Viramontes's voice [is] at once terse, energetic and vivid. -- Publishers Weekly
A vibrant portrait of a violent street culture. -- Booklist
The novel will no doubt -- like her other work -- break ground and enrich the range and vision of our American literature. I hope you, too, will feel the enthusiasm and faith in her work that I do. -- Julia Alvarez