"1890: When Desiderya Lopez, The Sleepy Prophet, finds an abandoned infant on the banks of an arroyo, she recognizes something in his spirit and brings him home. Pidre will go on to become a famous showman in the Anglo West whose main act, Simodecea, is Pidre's fearless, sharpshooting wife, who wrangles bears as part of his show. 1935: Luz "Little Light" Lopez and her brother Diego work the carnival circuit in downtown Denver. Luz, is a tea leaf reader,...

"An anthology of short stories, essays, poetry, and comics about the Mexican American experience"--

Esperanza and her mother are forced to leave their life of wealth and privilege in Mexico to go work in the labor camps of Southern California, where they must adapt to the harsh circumstances facing Mexican farm workers on the eve of the Great Depression.

Joe Mondragon, a feisty hustler with a talent for trouble, slammed his battered pickup to a stop, tugged on his gumboots, and marched into the arid patch of ground. Carefully (and also illegally), he tapped into the main irrigation channel. And so began-though few knew it at the time-the Milagro beanfield war. But like everything else in the dirt-poor town of Milagro, it would be a patchwork war, fought more by tactical retreats than by battlefield...

With her father away fighting in World War II and her grandfather too sick to create the traditional luminaria, Luz helps create farolitos, little lanterns, for their Christmas celebration instead.

Told in the style of a cumulative folk song, a grandmother makes empanadas, a traditional Hispanic treat, for her family. Includes recipe.

When his family has to move again a few days before Christmas in order to find work, Panchito worries that he will not get the ball he has been wanting. Cuando su familia tiene que mudarse de nuevo unos días antes de Navidad con el fin de encontrar trabajo, Panchito le preocupa que no se levante la bola que ha estado deseando.

In 1825 when Josefina trusts a trader in Santa Fe with an important deal, she makes a surprising discovery about this young American who leaves town without paying her.

"Thirteen-year-old Paola Santiago must return to the void to rescue her best friend Dante and face her biggest foe yet : El Cucuy, the lord of nightmares"--

Perfect Mexican daughters do not go away to college. And they do not move out of their parents' house after high school graduation. Perfect Mexican daughters never abandon their family. But Julia is not your perfect Mexican daughter. That was Olga's role. Then a tragic accident on the busiest street in Chicago leaves Olga dead and Julia left behind to reassemble the shattered pieces of her family. And no one seems to acknowledge that Julia is broken,...