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A Novel
by Luis Jaramillo
A lawyer and her elderly great-aunt use their supernatural gifts to find a lost child in this richly imagined and empowering story of motherhood, magic, and legacy in the vein of The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina and La Hacienda.
If you call to the witches, they will come.
1943, El Paso, Texas: teenager Nena spends her days caring for the small children of her older sisters, while longing for a life of freedom and adventure. The premonitions and fainting spells she has endured since childhood are getting worse, and Nena worries she'll end up like the scary old curandera down the street. Nena prays for help, and when the mysterious Sister Benedicta arrives late one night, Nena follows her across the borders of space and time. In colonial Mexico, Nena grows into her power, finding love and learning that magic always comes with a price.
In the present day, Nena's grandniece, Marta, balances a struggling legal aid practice with motherhood and the care of the now ninety-three-year-old Nena. When Marta agrees to help search for a daughter Nena left in the past, the two forge a fierce connection. Marta's own supernatural powers emerge, awakening her to new possibilities that threaten the life she has constructed.
"Gripping and cinematic, the novel's worlds of El Paso past and present will bewitch and enrapture." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Jaramillo's debut novel strikingly portrays a family's unrelenting love and survival across borders, generations, and adversity with vivid descriptions of El Paso, Juarez, and the supernatural. Fans of Isabel Cañas, Zoraida Córdova, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia who enjoy historical fiction and subtle fantasy will devour this book." —Booklist
"Spanning borders and centuries, The Witches of El Paso is a wild, wondrous novel about the magic that is singing all around us. With this story, Luis Jaramillo shows us how to catch the tune." —Julia Phillips, author of Disappearing Earth, an international bestseller and National Book Award Finalist
"Sexy, smart and soulful, Luis Jaramillo's The Witches of El Paso pulls us across borders and time to get to the essence of what it means for families to survive this beautiful, fractured world." —Mira Jacob, national bestselling author of Good Talk
This information about The Witches of El Paso was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Luis Jaramillo is the author of The Witches of El Paso and the award-winning short story collection, The Doctor's Wife. His writing has appeared in LitHub, BOMB Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, and other publications. He is an assistant professor of creative writing at The New School. He received an undergraduate degree from Stanford University and an MFA from The New School. Find out more at LuisJaramillo.com.
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