Candelaria

Your granddaughters are lost, Candelaria. Bianca, the brainy archaeologist, had to forfeit her life's work in Guatemala after her advisor seduced and deserted her. Paola, missing for over a decade, resurfaces in Boston as a brainwashed wellness cultist named Zoe. And Candy, the youngest, is a recovering addict who finds herself pregnant by a man she's not even sure ever existed. None of this concerns you of course, until a cataclysmic earthquake hits Boston. Now you must traverse the crumbling city to reach the Watertown Mall Old Country Buffet--for a reason you still cannot disclose--battling strange entities and your own strange past to save your granddaughters and possibly the world.

Melissa Lozada-Oliva, author of Dreaming of You, delivers an unsettling, raucous debut novel written with tongue-in-cheek humor and sharp cultural criticism that unearths one troubled family's legacy, feasting on diasporic identity politics and examining the limits of bodily autonomy and the dangers of wanting to belong at any cost.

320 pages. Hardcover.

About the Author

Melissa Lozada-Oliva is the child of Guatemalan and Colombian immigrants and the author of Dreaming of You and peluda. Her work has been featured in NPR, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, PAPER, Armani Beauty, and more. She is a member of the band Meli and the Specs. She holds an MFA in poetry from NYU and lives in New York City.