Nola Cespedes, an ambitious young reporter at the Times-Picayune, finally catches a break: an assignment to write her first full-length feature. While investigating her story, she also becomes fixated on the search for a missing tourist in the French Quarter. As Nola's work leads her into a violent criminal underworld, she's forced to face disturbing truths from her own past and is confronted with the question: In the aftermath of devastation, who is responsible for rebuilding what's been broken?

Vividly rendered in razor-sharp prose, this haunting thriller is a riveting...

What is identity when you re a girl adopted as an infant by a Cuban American family of Jehovah s Witnesses? The answer isn t easy. You won t find it in books. And you certainly won t find it in the neighborhood. This is just the beginning of Joy Castro s unmoored life of searching and striving that she s turned to account with literary alchemy in Island of Bones.

In personal essays that plumb the depths of not-belonging, Castro takes the all-too-raw materials of her adolescence and young adulthood and views them through the prism of time. The result is an exquisitely rendered,...

Adopted as a baby and raised by a devout Jehovah s Witness family, Joy Castro is constantly reminded to tell the truth no matter what the consequences. Nevertheless, Castro finds this tenet to be the most violated. Here, in her very own Truth Book, Castro bears witness to a childhood lost but a life regained.

Castro s parents divorce after her father is excommunicated for smoking. She is twelve when her mother marries a brother in the church who, though exhibiting an impeccable public persona, is violent and controlling at home. For two years, Joy does not grow at all; in...

Whenever a memoirist gives a reading, someone in the audience is sure to ask: How did your family react? Revisiting our pasts and exploring our experiences, we often reveal more of our nearest and dearest than they might prefer. This volume navigates the emotional and literary minefields that any writer of family stories or secrets must travel when depicting private lives for public consumption.

Essays by twenty-five memoirists, including Faith Adiele, Alison Bechdel, Jill Christman, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Robin Hemley, Dinty W. Moore, Bich Minh Nguyen, and Mimi...

Irene gives the wealthy businessmen what they want, diving headfirst into the filthy river, thinking only of providing for her baby daughter, Marisa, as the men salivate over her soaked body emerging onto the bank. A young boy tries to befriend the reticent younger sister of the town s cruelest bully, only to discover the family betrayal behind her quiet countenance. Josefa, a young bride, is executed for murdering the man who raped her. Joy Castro s How Winter Began traces these and other characters as they seek compassion from each other and themselves.

Thematically linked...