Loteria: A Novel

Loteria: A Novel

In Lotería , the spellbinding literary debut by Mario Alberto Zambrano, a young girl tells the story of her family’s tragic demise using a deck of cards of the eponymous Latin American game of chance.   With her older sister Estrella in the ICU and her father in jail, eleven-year-old Luz Castillo has been taken into the custody of the state. Alone in her room, she retreats behind a wall of silence, writing in her journal and shuffling through a deck of lotería cards. Each of the cards’ colorful images—mermaids, bottles, spiders, death, and stars—sparks a random memory.   Pieced together, these snapshots bring into focus the joy and pain of the young girl’s life, and the events that led to her present situation. But just as the story becomes clear, a breathtaking twist changes everything. Beautiful full-color images of lotería cards are featured throughout this intricate and haunting novel. *Starred Review* Zambrano’s stellar debut is proof positive that good things come in small packages. Here the good thing—dare we say, the very good thing?—is the journal/memoir of 11-year-old Luz Castillo, who has been taken into the state’s custody after her father is arrested. Luz’s mother has disappeared, and older sister Estrella lies dying in a hospital. Luz, whom some might label a willful child, steadfastly refuses to speak to anyone, least of all her counselor; instead, the child has opted to share her thoughts with God via written entries inspired by the pictures in a deck of Lotería cards. Zambrano’s selection of the Mexican bingo-like game cards as Luz’s communication vehicle is sheer genius. Not only is it the girl’s favorite game because it calls up happier times, but also because the images, including a tree, a rooster, and death, spur her imagination, unearthing events that otherwise might become forever suppressed. A nonjudgmental observer of her dysfunctional environment, Luz is trying to construct her own moral compass. Although this spare, little illustrated book may seem better suited to young adult readers, rest assured that Luz’s story will engage both young and old right up to, and beyond, the startling plot twist. --Donna Chavez “Mario Alberto Zambrano performs a lyrical and formal sleight of hand conjuring a spiritually profound and deeply moving story. Loteria is about everything that matters. . . . This gorgeous, one-of-a-kind debut, marks the emergence of a singular and powerful new literary voice.” - Amber Dermont, New York Times bestselling author of The Starboard Sea and Damage Control: Stories “Mario Alberto Zambrano’s Loteria is a tender, beautifully written story. In every line, Zambrano finds the happy and sad music of childhood. It is an entrancing work.” - Lynne Tillman, author of Someday This Will Be Funny “ Loteria … is constructed as a beautiful, gripping, and lyrical set of riddles (asked and solved) about life—and—death matters in one family. Like the novels of Cortazar, its form is intricate and beautiful. ” - Charles Baxter, author of Gryphon: New and Selected Stories and The Feast of Love “In a bold, deeply-felt debut Mario Alberto Zambrano brings us tragedy made powerful … These are people who hold on to each other so hard it hurts. And this moving novel will hug you too, every bit as tight.” - Josh Weil, author of The New Valley “Luz’s (and by extension Zambrano’s) refusal to give in to easy condemnations of her father’s actions, beautifully highlighted by genuinely difficult arguments between Luz and Estrella, is among this novel’s most risky and ultimately successful gambits.” - School Library Journal (starred review) “This is a gripping, heartbreaking novel by a new writer who already understands the power of understatement and controlled revelation.” - El Paso Times “Sometimes what Zambrano leaves off the page is just as important as what’s been written. This narrative sleight of hand shows Zambrano’s gift for evoking great pain in stark, lyrical sketches.” - Los Angeles Times, Summer Reading Pick “Zambrano’s stellar debut is proof positive that good things come in small packages.” - Booklist (starred review) "Loteria reaches a rare plane where it transcends its form and comes alive as a commentary on character, family and culture.” - Brooklyn Rail “ Loteria , charms on every page, despite heartache, love and loss. . . . The beauty and joy of her voice overcomes the hardships of her life, and by the end we have fallen in love. Bravo to a marvelous debut!” - Andrew Sean Greer, author of The Confessions of Max Tivoli “Lotería is the card-based Mexican variant of bingo and, in the hands of Zambrano, it’s a deck stacked with narrative possibilities. . . . An intriguing debut and an elegiac, miniature entry in the literature of Latin American diaspora that will break your heart.” - Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A polished tome of prose unreeling the tale of plucky little Luz Maria Castillo in the game of chance called life.… We peer like voyeurs, ar