From American Book Award-winning author Ana Castillo comes a suspenseful, moving new novel about a sensuous, smart, and fiercely independent woman. Eking out a living as a teacher's aide in a small New Mexican border town, Tia Regina is also raising her teenage nephew, Gabo, a hardworking boy who has entered the country illegally and aspires to the priesthood. When Gabo's father, Rafa, disappears while crossing over from Mexico, Regina fears the worst. After several days of waiting and with an ominous phone call from a ...
Read More
From American Book Award-winning author Ana Castillo comes a suspenseful, moving new novel about a sensuous, smart, and fiercely independent woman. Eking out a living as a teacher's aide in a small New Mexican border town, Tia Regina is also raising her teenage nephew, Gabo, a hardworking boy who has entered the country illegally and aspires to the priesthood. When Gabo's father, Rafa, disappears while crossing over from Mexico, Regina fears the worst. After several days of waiting and with an ominous phone call from a woman who may be connected to a smuggling ring, Regina and Gabo resolve to find Rafa. Help arrives in the form of Miguel, an amorous, recently divorced history teacher; Miguel's gregarious abuelo Milton; a couple of Gabo's gangbanger classmates; and a priest of wayward faith. Between the ruthless coyotes who exploit Mexicans while smuggling them to America and the border officials who are out to arrest and deport the illegal immigrants, looming threat is a constant companion on the journey. Ana Castillo brilliantly evokes the beautiful, stark desert landscape and creates vivid characters with strong voices and resilient hearts. Like Sandra Cisneros's acclaimed The House on Mango Street, wrote Barbara Kingsolver when reviewing So Far from God, Castillo's writing is seasoned with Mexican aphorisms and] rich symbolism. . . . Impossible to resist. The Guardians serves as a remarkable testament to enduring faith, family bonds, cultural pride, and the humanexperience. The Guardians is a rollicking read, with jokes and suspense and joy rides and hearts breaking, mending and breaking again. It has...a deeply rooted urgency, expressed with a compelling mix of bruised indignation and bemused tenderness....This smart, passionate novel deserves a wide audience. -- Los Angeles Times Timely and highly readable....Castillo's most important accomplishment in The Guardians is to give a unique literary voice to questions about what makes up a 'family, ' Mexican-American or otherwise, where an independent soul can find redemption, particularly in a hostile world, and how we can realistically find 'faith, ' if we can find it at all, after we have suffered through our personal and political histories, and are still standing on this earth. This is a wonderful novel that does justice to life on the Mexican-American border. -- El Paso Times Only a gifted storyteller could portray one family's tragic struggle to overcome the barriers between nationality and dignity in a way that makes her cause own own. Does Castillo do this? Claro que si. -- New York Daily News What drives the novel is its chorus of characters, all, in their own way, witnesses and guardian angels. In the end, Castillo's unmistakable voice-earthy, impassioned, weaving a 'hybrid vocabulary for a hybridpeople'-is the book's greatest revelation, even as the search for Rafa races to its dreaded conclusion. -- Time Out New York From its lyrical first lines...The Guardians invites you into the story of Regina, a 50ish virgin-widow living in a small town on the border between the U.S. and Mexico; her neighbors; her family; and the dangerous forces that surround them -- the narco traffickers, the Border Patrol, the coyotes and the 'unmerciful desert' itself. The novel is earning praise for its timeliness in addressing issues of immigration, and for what novelist Cristina Garcia calls its 'literary magic.' -- Orange County Register Castillo's topical, heartbreaking novel blooms from the rugged desert soil along the U.S.-Mexican border, in a small New Mexican town perched on the fault line of the immigration controversy.... Castillo] allows her characters to speak poignantly to the harsh truths of border life....What if we didn't have passionate, lyrical writers to shine a beacon on injustice and cruelty or remind us of the dignity due all human beings? We would be poorer and more ignorant, indeed. -- Miami Herald Forecast for Summer Reading The complex and perilous life along th
Read Less
Add this copy of The Guardians: a Novel to cart. $1.49, very good condition, Sold by Hippo Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Toledo, OH, UNITED STATES, published 2007 by Random House.
Add this copy of The Guardians: a Novel to cart. $1.49, good condition, Sold by Hippo Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Toledo, OH, UNITED STATES, published 2008 by Random House Trade Paperbacks.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Good. All pages and cover are intact. Possible slightly loose binding, minor highlighting and marginalia, cocked spine or torn dust jacket. Maybe an ex-library copy and not include the accompanying CDs, access codes or other supplemental materials.
Add this copy of The Guardians: a Novel to cart. $1.55, fair condition, Sold by Once Upon A Time Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Tontitown, AR, UNITED STATES, published 2007 by Random House.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Fair. This is a used book. It may contain highlighting/underlining and/or the book may show heavier signs of wear. It may also be ex-library or without dustjacket. This is a used book. It may contain highlighting/underlining and/or the book may show heavier signs of wear. It may also be ex-library or without dustjacket.
Add this copy of The Guardians: a Novel to cart. $1.99, good condition, Sold by Friends of the Phoenix Library rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Phoenix, AZ, UNITED STATES, published 2007 by Random House.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Good. This is a former library book with library stickers and stamps. 100% of this purchase will support literacy programs through a nonprofit organization!
Add this copy of The Guardians: a Novel to cart. $2.00, good condition, Sold by Discover Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Toledo, OH, UNITED STATES, published 2008 by Random House Trade Paperbacks.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Good. All pages and cover are intact. Possible slightly loose binding, minor highlighting and marginalia, cocked spine or torn dust jacket. Maybe an ex-library copy and not include the accompanying CDs, access codes or other supplemental materials.
Add this copy of The Guardians: a Novel to cart. $2.00, good condition, Sold by Discover Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Toledo, OH, UNITED STATES, published 2007 by Random House.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Good. All pages and cover are intact. Possible slightly loose binding, minor highlighting and marginalia, cocked spine or torn dust jacket. Maybe an ex-library copy and not include the accompanying CDs, access codes or other supplemental materials.
Add this copy of The Guardians to cart. $2.09, very good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Reno rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Reno, NV, UNITED STATES, published 2008 by Random House Trade.
Add this copy of The Guardians to cart. $2.09, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Atlanta rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Brownstown, MI, UNITED STATES, published 2008 by Random House Trade.
Add this copy of The Guardians to cart. $2.09, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Reno rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Reno, NV, UNITED STATES, published 2008 by Random House Trade.
Add this copy of The Guardians to cart. $2.09, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Baltimore rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Halethorpe, MD, UNITED STATES, published 2008 by Random House Trade.