The Reading Warehouse

Lala Reyes' grandmother is descended from a family of renowned rebozo, or shawl-makers. The striped (caramelo) is the most beautiful of all, and the one that makes its way, like the family history it has come to represent, into Lala's possession. The novel opens with the Reyes' annual car trip-a caravan overflowing with children, laughter, and quarrels-from Chicago to the other side, Mexico City. It is there, each year, that Lala hears her family's stories, separating the truth from the healthy lies that have ricocheted from one generation to the next. We travel from the Mexico City that was the Paris of the New World to the music-filled streets of Chicago at the dawn of the Roaring Twenties-and finally, to Lala's own difficult adolescence in the not-quite-promised land of San Antonio, Texas.

Caramelo is a vital, wise, romantic tale of homelands, sometimes real, sometimes imagined. Vivid, funny, intimate, historical, it is a brilliant work destined to become a classic: a major new novel from one of our country's most beloved storytellers.

Sandra Cisneros is an American writer best known for her acclaimed first novel The House on Mango Street, and her subsequent short story collection, Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. Her work experiments with literary forms and investigates emerging subject positions, which Cisneros attributes to growing up in a context of cultural hybridity and economic inequality that endowed her with unique stories to tell. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and is regarded as a key figure in Chicana literature.