The Amado Women

By Désirée Zamorano

The Amado women are bound by blood, separated by secrets, and must learn to come together in the face of daunting circumstances.

Description

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 fulfilment 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?

About the Creators

Désirée Zamorano

Désirée Zamorano is a playwright, Pushcart Prize nominee, and novelist. She is the director of the the Community Literacy Center at Occidental College; she also collaborates with InsideOut Writers, a program that works with formerly incarcerated youth. She lives in Pasadena, California. The Amado Women is her first trade-published novel.

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 ofMexican 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 ofCrazy in AlabamaandGeorgia 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

Paperback

  • ISBN 9781935955733
  • Price $16.95
  • Publication Date Jul 01, 2014
  • Trim Size 9 × 6 in
  • Weight 0.8125 lbs
  • Page Count 240
  • Interests

  • Imprint Cinco Puntos Press
  • Audience Adult
  • BISAC Category 1 FICTION / Hispanic & Latino / General
  • BISAC Category 2 FICTION / Family Life / Marriage & Divorce
  • BISAC Category 3 FICTION / Women
  • Themes Families, Fiction, Latinx / Latino / Hispanic, Mothers, Realistic Fiction, Siblings
  • Languages English
  • Reading Levels

  • Guided Reading Adult
  • Interest Level Adult
  • Reading Level Adult
  • This Book is Included in These Collections: